“Curious George” was a peacock who showed up one day at my parent’s home in Rolling Hills and stayed for oveer 8 years. Our “front yard” overlooked the coastline and all the open space below us that never had been developed after the initial Portugese Bend land movement started. That included a dirt road called “Burma Road” which ended near our house and led right past what we called “Peacock Flats”. It was about a mile from us, and near the Vanderlip estate. Curious George must have just followed Burma Road to our house drawn by his curiousity hearing our roosters crowing in the distance. Peacocks are attracted to other birds.

Even before Curious George showed up, peacocks had always already been part of my life. We heard their muffled calls in the distance, like “sound bites” in a movie. I read that peacock calls are the 4th most used bird call “sound bite” used by movie directors in scenes portraying “mystical paradises”, Shangra-la,etc

Although there are those who consider peacocks a nuisance on the peninsula, there are many more who appreciate the rustic elegance that these birds bring with them to the peninsula.

When Curious George showed up in around 1960, the feral peacock population was not that large. We were the only people we knew or among our neighborhood in Rolling Hills who had a resident peacock. My parents home had a several large sliding glass doors in front of their house in that faced a large brick patio. Curious George spent a lot of time on that patio, put on his “performance” standing in front of the sliding glass doors. Every night, he roosted on the same branch, in the same tree right next to my bedroom window. Initially, I thought he was always looking at himself. After the fact, I actually think that he was looking at me looking at him!

Peacocks are designed to hypnotize and mesmerize. I learned a lot about some of their “special features” from an old man named Bob. He lived in Torrance, raised birds, and was whom we had bought some chickens from. He worked for many years at the Catalina Island Bird Park and really was knowledgeable about peacocks and a bird expert. He told me that he had no doubt that peacocks and their tail display “entranced” people as much as peahens. I certainly had been “entranced” enough that I often chose Curious George for my drawings subject matter over the years. I even picked Curious George as “my favorite animal” in a 4th grade “Interest Inventory” our teacher had us fill out. My mother had saved that inventory, which I recently found in a box of papers, with a drawing of Curious George on that back I had “2 dogs, 1 cat, 3 horses, 14 chickens, 1 peacock”. I love animals, you can’t begin to compare the interpersonal relationship with a dog, etc. to a peacock but George scored “favorite”…yes…I had been entranced.

Bob , the bird expert, showed me a peacock feather and said “this is an engineering masterpiece!” He told me that when a peacock vibrates his tail, it seems that all those “eyes” can hypnotize the one he is trying to hypnotize. When the tail is rattled it is called a “train rattle” . When the train is rattled, the vibration of the tail feathers create this dynamic iridescent background shaking around a eyespot. The behavior of the feather eyespots is remarkable not for their movement as such, but their apparent non-movement . The eye-spot feather structures are heavier and have microhooks that enable them to cling together in a motion resistant mass . This mesmerizing show has a soundtrack of a low frequency rumble. That rumble is like a drumming and once again, designed to create a trance like state, hypnotic!

Bob (and myself) drew our conclusion about peacocks affecting people too simply from what is a long long history of being worshipped in many cultures, considered sacred, mentioned in Greek mythology, the Bible, etc. etc. all the peacock symbolism that has existed for thousands of years. In Hindu mythology, the “Mayura” which is what they call peacocks, are depicted as divine birds who kill snakes. Peacocks hate snakes and will kill them, being that they are ground nesters that makes their eggs and chicks vulnerable to snakes. Many places, like in India, peacocks are kept to keep down the poisonous cobra snake population.

Peacocks are territorial, and will protect that territory fiercely from snakes . I saw Curious George kill a small rattlesnake on our front lawn. It was awesome, he pinned the snake’s head with both feet and pecked the snake’s head until it was dead Being in the location with all that open space meant we would occasionally come across a rattlesnake We rarely saw a snake around the house/lawns/yard in the years that Curious George made our home his territory.

I am grateful for, and I feel blessed that Curious George chose us, because by doing so, he really “colored my Palos Verdes world.”

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