Peacock takes out $500 in wine after crashing liquor store



ARCADIA, Calif. – A rowdy peacock caused hundreds of dollars in damage to a Los Angeles-area liquor store before an animal control officer finally managed to eject the bird.

The female peacock, known as a peahen, strolled into Royal Oaks Liquor Store in Arcadia, California Monday, according to the Associated Press.

Manager Rani Ghanem apparently didn't notice the bird until a customer asked him in Spanish about the "pollo," or chicken. Things got messy when the sharp-taloned peahen decided to seek higher ground, flying up and landing hard among the top shelf bottles, sending some crashing to the ground, according to KCBS.

Ghanem said the peahen even buzzed him at one point: "It flew towards me. I didn't know they could actually fly high but it flew up above the counter and it landed here on top of the ice cream freezer."

Unsure of what to do next, the 21-year-old college student called animal control and an officer arrived with a net – and that's when the real destruction began. As soon as the peahen felt the net, it began jumping and flapping violently across a table packed with bottles before Ghanem helped the officer lift the bird and carry it out of the store.

Ghan estimates his losses to be roughly $500.

"Yeah, he's got expensive taste," Ghanem joked. "I'm like, 'You break, you buy, dude.' But clearly he didn't. He got away with it."

Peafowl, which are common to the area and protected by law, are a source of beauty to some and a nuisance to others. The colorful – and noisy – birds are also notorious garden thieves known to leave droppings on driveways and occasionally attack cars' shiny fenders, according to the Los Angeles Times.

They first arrived in Arcadia thanks to the city's founder, who brought them back from a trip to India in the late 1800s, a local historian told the paper.