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Letter to the editor

Beloved peacocks get the boot

Graceful peacocks delighted this neighborhood for almost two decades. Then there was a falling out.

By EILEEN SCHULTE, Times Staff Writer
Published January 13, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Jim Damaske | Times] Alex Valdivieso calls the white peacock Barry. Valdivieso and many other neighbors say they are heartbroken and angry that Fortunato relocated most of the peacocks without consulting them. Valdivieso wants to know where the birds are now, but Fortunato won't say.

CLEARWATER

Other than the occasional shrieks, the ones that sound like a woman screaming, there is a sad kind of peace in a tiny slice of country near Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard. - A rooster crows. Sometimes bald eagles perch in the oaks. And last week, three peafowl stood on the roof of a light pink house.

Down below, an unusual white peacock known as Barry ambled over to Alex Valdivieso to angle for a Ritz cracker. Wish granted.

Then Valdivieso, 56, scratched the dirt and leaves. Barry scratched back, bent down and gulped down a bug. Valdivieso said he and other neighbors had to teach Barry to find food because his mother rejected him as a chick.

Now some neighbors say Barry and the other peacocks are in mourning. They said they miss their family and call for them.

That's the sound like a woman's scream.

But no one screams back.

Their 28 feathered friends are gone.

Robert Fortunato, a 27-year resident of the Bayview neighborhood, had them trapped and hauled away. At first, he wouldn't tell a reporter where they went except that they are on a few acres, "probably in a better place."

Without answers, neighbors are buzzing with theories, speculation and resentment.

"I heard that he sold them," Valdivieso said.

Farm-raised adult peacocks commonly are offered for sale for hundreds of dollars.

Worse, Lisa Kadlec, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1988, said she was told the trapper was related to Fortunato's girlfriend, making it a lucrative inside job.

That's ridiculous, said Fortunato, 60, a project manager for IBM.

"I didn't sell them," he said. "Those people are crazy."

When pressed, Fortunato said the peacocks went to live in St. Petersburg, though he wouldn't say where. He would not divulge the trapper's name. He did acknowledge the trapper "is connected to my girlfriend." He would not tell the Times his girlfriend's name, just that she lives in North Pinellas.

Now Fortunato is under attack by many of his former friends.

They posted signs near his house saying We Miss Our Peacocks, Bring Back Our Peacocks and Greed Equals No More Peacocks.

Fortunato said someone vandalized his house and a neighbor threatened to punch him in the face.

* * *

It wasn't always this way.

Fortunato and his neighbors said they used to get along just fine.

David McKay, whose family has lived in the Bayview neighborhood for more than two decades, said he remembers a single peacock living near Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard and McMullen-Booth Road years ago.

He doesn't know if the bird was an escapee or a descendent of a bird from the long-ago peacock farm where Clearwater Mall now stands.

Perhaps the bird needed company.

"In 1990, some neighbors got together and collected funds and bought three female peafowl from North Florida," said McKay, 45, a retired auto mechanic. "We all just kept an eye on them."

Over the years, the bevy grew to about 32 peacocks.

"They're just beautiful," McKay said. "They'll follow you around."

He said things were so harmonious that Fortunato even "fed the peacocks in his yard with his late wife."

One day, a woman who was talking on her cell phone while driving hit a big male peacock.

"He died in my arms," said Kadlec, 48, who works as a receptionist in Tampa. "We buried him in our yard."

After that, residents persuaded the city to install three speed humps on Meadowlark Lane, where the birds conducted their daily parade.

Some homeowners tacked up "Peacock Xing" signs on their mailboxes to warn motorists.

* * *

But when Fortunato began a major renovation of his one-story house, things changed.

He became irritated that the peacocks, which roosted in the trees above his house, would walk on his roof in the daytime. They also left their droppings everywhere.

He said the bevy felt comfortable hanging around his house because he does not have a dog to chase them away.

With reconstruction under way, one or more of the males pecked at a window until it cracked.

When Fortunato installed expensive new front doors with glass panes, he decided he did not want them to be broken by the peacocks.

Frustrated, he called the city of Clearwater for help. But officials told him they do not handle peacock issues. He was on his own.

So Fortunato arranged to have a professional capture the peacocks, which are not protected by the state, and take them away.

"I told the trapper, 'Don't take them all,"' Fortunato said.

The birds began to disappear over a two-week period starting in October.

Fortunato's neighbors said the process was so slow, they didn't know anything was amiss until almost all the birds were gone.

One woman, 79-year-old Edna Black, said she was glad to see them go.

"They make so much noise," she said. "And they tore out my vegetable plants and my flowers."

But Kadlec was furious. She said she confronted Fortunato and tried to force him to tell her the trapper's name so she could buy the peacocks back, but he refused.

"He took moms away from their babies," she said.

Valdivieso said neighbors called the police about the birds' disappearance. But they were told that Fortunato could have the birds trapped if they were on his property.

Valdivieso and many other neighbors say they are heartbroken and angry that Fortunato relocated the peacocks without consulting them.

Some residents helped raise the peacocks from the time they pecked out of their shells.

They fed them cereal and dog food. Peacocks, they said, will eat just about anything.

Now the community is not the same, they say.

"Where are the birds, Bob?" McKay said. "That's what we want to know."

Eileen Schulte can be reached at schulte@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4153.

[Last modified January 12, 2008, 20:35:23]