6 days ago
Dozens of peacocks disappear from remote California hotel
'A guest over the weekend said he had seen two guys putting a peacock in a crate and driving away,' said Rafe Goorwitch, an event coordinator and the unofficial peacock wrangler at the hotel. 'That's when we made the discovery we were down so many.'
Hotel ownership had brought in a mated pair of Indian blue peafowl 15 years ago. Many generations later, their progeny had the run of the place and became a signature of the hotel.
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'The public has embraced them,' Goorwitch said. 'We hang peacock pictures around the hotel.'
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Two of the birds were named. The second senior male was Pancho, and 'the senior chief peacock,' as Goorwitch put it, was Alibaba, called Baba for short.
'He was an atypical peafowl,' Goorwitch explained. 'Peacocks are known to be aloof; he would come right up to you. He came into the dining room and ballroom, hung out in the rafters. He was not skittish like most peafowl. He just had this attitude. He was just charming.'
With nearly all the birds gone, the property is now much quieter. 'They just have a presence,' Goorwitch said. 'They definitely were crowd pleasers. Baba would come like a dog if people wanted to take pictures. He'll definitely be missed.'
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Goorwitch regularly fed the birds. 'They eat anything,' he said. 'They love grapes, dried cranberries. They love full kernel corn. If you want to see a peafowl ecstatic, give them wedding cake.'
The police are looking into the case, but finding the birds might be difficult because they were not tagged.
'They were not seen as property,' Goorwitch said. 'The only one I'd be able to identify is Alibaba.'
The case is puzzling. The remoteness of the hotel, 30 miles from significant population centers, made it a somewhat unusual spot for a crime of this kind.
'It's surprising someone would want to steal them,' he said. 'They're loud, they scream, they honk like a goose.'
It's also not easy to grab such a large bird, he said. A thief would have needed a sack, crate, and vehicle.
The male birds have a value of maybe $2,000, the females half that, so no one is getting very rich. 'It's just odd,' he said.
But it may not be the end of peafowl at the Ryde, as the hotel has received offers from bird owners to replenish the stock.
Of the four birds remaining, one is a juvenile male, and three are female. They include Alibaba's last companion. Understandably, 'her behavior has been off,' Goorwitch said.
