The search for Steve the peacock, gone missing Sunday, is on.
Beckley Club Estates homeowner John Paul Hossley returned home from a summer trip to a distressing situation.
A peacock — who was born on the Hossley property four years ago, who stands sentry over the house while they’re away and who the family calls Steve — was gone.
“He is a 4-year-old peacock and was hatched in our backyard,” Hossley says in a message posted to Facebook. “Over the past four years he has become a member of our family. We have hand fed him since he was a chick. He and our dog are buddies and he responds to me calling his name. We love opening our garage every day to find him standing there waiting for us to give him some breakfast seeds.”
Steve typically spends his days “soaking up sun rays on the stump” on the Hossleys’ front lawn or on a “porch stoop where he hangs when it is raining,” Hossley says.
But Steve’s untroubled life was upended last Sunday (June 25) at 11:45 a.m., a witness says.
That’s when neighbor David Aguilera observed, he said in a message to Hossley, “the theft of a male peacock” from in front of the home.
Aguilar told Hossley he reported to Dallas Police that he saw a “Latino person in a large white truck” abduct the peacock from the driveway on Edgemont. “He saw me and drove the opposite way, toward Marsalis.”
Neighbors are alerting other neighbors in an attempt to find video footage of the suspected bird-napper and the involved vehicle.
“If anyone heard anything else we would also love to hear what is out there,” Hossley pleads.
This is not the first time a peacock has been stolen from the Beckley Club Estates neighborhood, which, along with adjacent Cedar Oaks enclave, is home to an ostentation of 40 or so peafowl.
Although the animals are feral, neighbors say they see the same ones each day, get to know their personalities and watch the babies grow up.
2012 Advocate photo
In 2015 a peacock theft was caught on a surveillance camera, and neighbors said that about three weeks after circulating the video, that peacock was anonymously returned.
While most neighbors love their showily feathered semi-pets, once, in 2013, a homeowner complained about the fowl to animal control, and others were moved to draw up a Save the Peacocks petition. (Neighbors commenting on change.org said “the peacocks bring life and beauty to the neighborhood,” that “they are peaceful and beautiful” and even “add to home values.”
Please alert us (email below) or a Beckley Club Estates neighbor if you know anything about Steve’s disappearance.
Here’s one more photo:
Steve on a step.
