Who Owns This Peacock?

This past weekend, I'm laying in bed, half-asleep and half-aware of the night sounds seeping in through the open window above the bed. I hear this bird call that doesn't quite register the first time. The second time the bird calls I struggle from the grogginess of sleep and the first thought in my mind is "old black-and-white Tarzan movies". The third time the bird calls I think to myself, "peacock, somewhere between this place and the shore of Orange Lake."

Yesterday afternoon, as I picked up my mail from the historic Evinston post office/general store, I asked my neighbor/store proprietor, 7-decade Evinston resident and local historian/community fixture, Freddy Wood, "Do you folks have a peacock?" He replied, "No, but I hear one early every morning when I'm picking my peaches as the sun comes up."

I said, "Maybe there's a wild one out there running with the turkeys." He said, "I saw 2 turkeys down there early yesterday morning." "Down there" meaning at the end of the 2-rut sand road that runs a hundred yards past our driveway and ends at a gate separating a few hundred acres of fenced lakeshore pastures and woods from the rest of the land adjacent to the paved county road and former railroad right-of-way. Freddy farms a couple of acres there.

Freddy then went on to say that about 5 years ago an acquaintance in Cross Creek, across Orange Lake from Evinston, had a flock of peacocks that up and disappeared, never to be seen again.

So the mystery remains. Who owns this vocal peacock, that Freddy and I have been hearing lately?