Who Shot the Neighborhood Peacock?

Someone shot the neighborhood peacock, Pretty Boy, back in mid-March.

The much-loved bird had lived in a neighborhood behind the town library for a decade. Local residents started getting concerned about it last month when they saw the peacock become visibly weaker. Then they discovered it had been shot. And bitten by a bobcat.  

Los Gatos residents Pat and Alan Lillich captured it on March 30 and took it to For the Birds hospital in Cupertino, where veterinarians tried, without success, to nurse it back to health.

The peacock had wounds on its wing and side and couldn't escape from the animal that attacked it. The animal, believed to be a bobcat,  injured its head and punctured its skull, according to Pat Lillich.

Metal fragments were found on its wing and side, consistent with it being shot twice by a firearm. 

"The whole time I saw him, he was really dying," said a saddened Pat Lillich. 

Pretty Boy was euthanized by a veterinarian on April 5.  The neighbors are mortified about what happened to the beautiful bird that elegantly roamed in their backyards, displaying its colorful feathers.

Pretty Boy spent about a week at the clinic. Its medical expenses were covered by the Lillich family, concerned neighbors and the nonprofit, San Jose-based Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue organization, which connected the couple to the clinic.

Pat Lillich said she's heartbroken over the bird's death. She said she knew its mother, and saw it grow up from a small chick and watched its interaction with other peacocks that lived on the hill in the Euclid Avenue and Jones Road neighborhood behind the town library.

"My daughters watched him grow up from a baby. We watched his mom try and teach him how to jump on the tree. He was a part of the neighborhood. He was beautiful. I just can't imagine why someone would think they could shoot him."

Pretty Boy had lived in the neighborhood for about 10 years and could have lived 20 more years, she said. "It wasn't his time."

Lillich called the to report the incident, she said. She's worried that someone would shoot a bird and discharge a firearm in a residential area with many small children. "He didn't travel very far ... does this mean someone was shooting in our neighborhood? In these houses with all these children around here? That bothers me."

Police forwarded her complaint to animal control officers, who interviewed her and were upset, too, but had no way of finding out what happened or who did it, she said. They encouraged the neighborhood to report any information about the incident to them for further investigation.

Sandy Vaurs, who also lives in the neighborhood and laments the bird's death, said she misses Pretty Boy and the family of peacocks that lived in the neighborhood that someone transported to Summit Road up in the mountains.

"He had a mate, an albino, all white, and they had babies, and there were peacocks everywhere," she said.

"Every year, he strutted his tail, then he would lose it, but then it would grow again. It was really pretty."

Not only was the bird welcomed by neighbors, but it had become an attraction to townsfolk who saw it when they went to the neighborhood to get to the .

"He was a neighborhood character," Pat Lillich said. "Yes, he was noisy. Yes, he was large, but that's not a reason to shoot him."

Pretty Boy was known for making a loud call at 2 a.m. and also zooming by overhead while he flew from one roof to another.

"It was like having a small airplane go off over your head," Lillich said. "It's not going to be the same without him."