Juno and Prince were two peacock chicks whose mother had died not long after they were hatched. Their owner, too tenderhearted to see them perish, fed them diligently until they were about two months old.
It wasn't long before they started causing trouble.

They began by escaping from their coop and scaring all the birds out of the trees. Including the rambunctious and loud sulphur crested cockatoos.

They, in their dozens, would sit high in neighbouring trees and shriek their outrage at having been ousted from their pleasant arrangement with Vicky, the daughter of the family who lived there.

Until the peacock chicks had made their presence known, Vicky would put food out for an entire flock of big, white cockatoos.

They came down in a flurry of white wings and yellow crests and allowed her to touch them and stroke their beautiful white plumage.

Suddenly their reign was over and other less amenable creatures were ruling the roost.
Vicky was heartbroken. She loved those big, white cockies and missed their daily visit sadly.

Her mother, Carole, decided to find another home for the little peacock chicks and when I heard about it, I jumped at the chance.
They were practically given away (which ought to have put my radar up) and the two little darlings came home to our place two doors along the street.

I put them in a cage by themselves until the chickens got used to them, but they didn't seem to mind where they slept.
The chooks gave them a wide berth.

They were very haughty though so any plans I had for hand feeding them and having them come to my call failed abysmally.

Every morning I would open their cage and gently lift each one down from their high perch.
As they grew further out of the chick stage they began to shy away from that one brief touch of human contact, but they allowed it under sufferance, making little noises to each other under their breaths.

Shaking their feathers out and strolling away to the drinking water for a refresher to start the day, they would keep me in view so that when I sprinkled grain out for the morning feed they would be first in line.
One morning there was a half a pot of porridge left from breakfast when the boys asked for eggs on toast instead of cereal.
Juno was so excited she jumped up to the pot, quite forgetting to be nonchalant and casual.
Prince was just as hasty and they had cleaned the saucepan out completely before I could grab it to take it away.

The front of their feathers was covered in oatmeal and I was reminded of how dirty Galah chicks get when they are fed porridge.

Juno and Prince looked so unlike their usual sleek, green/blue plumed selves that I thought I would wash their feathers clean, but by the time I readied a bowl of water and found an old towel, they had restored each other's plumage back to its immaculate state.

The next thing they did was to consult their list of "things to do to annoy mummy",and pick one to start the day. It could be anything from digging where I had been gardening the day before, to climbing the pine tree just for fun.

They tormented the chickens with such delight and skill that I wondered if they were jealous of the flock with its cohesive 'All for one and one for all' instinctive behaviour.

Often the hens would be waylaid in the nests when they went to lay an egg.
There would be a heck of a ruckus between a hen urgently needing somewhere to sit, and a naughty peacock chick who chose that moment to scatter all the straw in the hen house.

Then when they had been roared out of that, they would go and find the rooster, sneak up on him together and take a flying leap onto his back.

It was enough for poor Ferdinand to have him let out a wild scream of terror and race away in confusion, leaving the hens in an hysterical state and Juno and Prince sitting in the warm, hastily vacated dirt bath patch sniggering in delight.

It occurred to me one day that never once did I discover claw marks or any other evidence of peacock onslaught upon any of their victims.

Peacocks are ferocious protectors of themselves and their mate and will defend to the death if need be.

They have long, savage claws for digging which, when used in defense, would inflict a serious wound upon anyone unwary enough to get in the way.

All these two had done was to ruffle a few feathers and go AWOL a few times.
Which was a more than generous exchange in return for the pleasure of their company.

Their final game was something I had never dreamed them capable of doing.
The people over the back fence had a large, loud dog that barked incessantly at my chickens when ever he spotted them through the chinks in the fence.

A sheet of strategically placed iron across his line of vision soon brought peace to the back yard and Tyson was quiet.

However, that wasn't enough for Juno and Prince. They had decided to deal with Tyson their own way and as soon as I was out of sight they took action.

At first I didn't realize where the noise was coming from. It was a shriek of terror and then a high, whining yelp that was unmistakably canine. The only dog within earshot was Tyson!!

I ran down the back yard and hurled myself at the top of the back fence. There they were!!

Looking up at Tyson on top of his kennel trying to climb the wall into the kitchen window.

"You bl**dy birds," I yelled at them, "Get back here this minute! I'll have your feathers for dusters if you don't get here immediately."

They glanced back at me as if to say "Yeah yeah we're coming. Don't get your topknot in a tangle."

They gave Tyson a last,meaningful look, which had him scrabbling frantically and yelping over his shoulder, and then strolled away across the back lawn and hopped the fence on the other side of the back yard.

They weren't going to come home the way they had gone.
That was too much like obedience and that wouldn't do at all.

I knew then they would return to the back yard via a bolt hole under the house and re-appear near the back door as innocent as sparrows looking for crumbs.

They paid Tyson one more visit shortly before they were sent to another home on a farm up at Tarlee.
I was away from home at the time, so I have only anecdotal evidence but, if my informant wasn't exaggerating, Juno had Tyson on his back and would have scratched his eyes out.

Meanwhile her brother, the beautiful Prince, was doing a war dance on the top of the kennel, shrieking in Peacock fashion and encouraging her to go in for the kill.
It was the last straw.

Tyson hadn't barked at the chooks in weeks and it had been quiet for almost as long, and so I made the phone call to the farmer in Tarlee to come and get a couple of additions to his flock of peacocks.

Juno wasn't very keen to go and she went over the fence back towards Vicky's place. They caught her easily and she sat in the cage all tucked in with her eyes closed as if she was meditating
.
Prince, however, wasn't going to some farm out in the sticks where there was nothing to do.

No sirreee Bob!! He resisted every attempt I made to get him to co-operate.

Finally I called the chooks for a feed and Prince, from his vantage point halfway up the huge pine tree in our back yard, saw Ferdinand and all his ladies having grain and greens from the kitchen and realized he was hungry.

He dropped lightly to the ground and came towards me, his eyes fixed on the blue enamel bowl, not noticing my son off to one side holding a large fishing net.

My other son came up behind him with a piece of hessian, but Prince either didn't see him or was too intent on the food to put two and two together.

Suddenly they rushed him and caught his claws in the net.
Quickly they wrapped him in the hessian, covering his head, and brought him around the front of the house to where the man was waiting.

Prince's cries of protest roused Juno from her reverie as she tried to escape and save her brother from whatever assailed him, but soon he was plopped in alongside her.
Whereupon she gave him a sharp peck for distressing her unnecessarily.

The farmer was delighted with these two additions to his flock.
He said they were very young and therefore malleable and easy to imprint upon.
Or so he thought.My response to his remarks was a quietly spoken aside,"Good luck with that." With those two little terrors, he'll need it.

As we watched the truck rumble away and turn the corner, I heard Ferdinand crowing.
He rarely crowed since the peacocks had come to live with us as they would chase him relentlessly until I came out and put the hose on them for being bossy.

Three loud crows he gave and then another couple just because he could.

Tyson never bothered our chickens after that. Perhaps the memory of a clawed Nemesis was enough to deter him, but it was very quiet from that sector of the back yard after that.