On the afternoon of Thursday, July 15th, the Sapulpa Animal Shelter received a call, and soon, they were hauling in a big beautiful peacock; a far cry from the pups and kittens they’re used to hearing about.
The shelter has had their share of strange calls, but this one wasn’t that surprising, Officer Pete Sellers told Sapulpa Times.
“We’ve been getting multiple calls over the last two weeks,” he said. Sellers and other shelter employees say they’ve gotten numerous calls from the Hickory Hill Road neighborhood about sightings of not one, but two peafowl—a male peacock and a peahen, usually seen together. When Mary Ruhl and her associate Brandi went to go capture the bird, only the male was present. “We’ve not been able to find the hen yet,” she said.
The bird had to be placed in the shelter’s laundry room because, well, there just wasn’t anywhere else to put him. He’s big to begin with, but aside from that, the shelter is suffering from an overabundance of pets, both due to mating season, but also due to a new phenomenon—”pandemic pets.”
“We’ve had a lot of owner surrenders, because people got these animals during the pandemic,” Ruhl began, “but then realized they weren’t going to be able to take care of them when they went back to work.”
The situation is one that plays out every year around Easter time when children are gifted chicks or rabbits that later become too much to handle, but this much larger version of “pet remorse” has grown to such a scale that it’s placing a strain on fosters and rescues. “Even the rescues are just crammed right now,” Ruhl said.
Kittens make up the majority of the inhabitants in the shelter right now, and it’s getting worse; Ruhl says there are over 130 felines at the shelter, and that two shelter cats have produced litters in about 48 hours. Common sicknesses, such as ringworm, are spreading outside the isolation room, because the shelter is just so packed. Thankfully, it’s treatable. If you can adopt, kittens are $45.00 and adult cats are $55.00. If you adopt an animal that’s already spayed or neutered, the adoption fee is just $10.00.
As for Jack the peacock (we named him Jack, and if they find the hen, her name is Jill), Sellers and Ruhl say it’s not likely that the bird will be up for adoption if they can’t locate his owners. “He’ll probably go to a rescue,” Ruhl says. “He’s not really an exotic bird,” Sellers added. “More like a chicken.”
A really pretty chicken, at least.
If you want to foster or adopt an animal, call the Sapulpa Animal Shelter at 918-227-2722.
