The incident was another entry in a long list of hysteria, quarrels and confrontations over peacocks, which are not native to the United States. In 2017, a peaceful Miami neighborhood became embroiled in a feud about whether its peafowl invaders should be allowed to stay, and someone shot one of the birds out of a tree. Last year in Oakland, some people took to the social networking site Nextdoor to lament the shrill cries of their new peacock neighbor. And in the Los Angeles area, where residents muse about poisoning the birds or striking them with their cars, a retiree recently described the sound of the region’s peacocks as “like babies being tortured through a microphone.”

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