A peacock more than ruffled feathers while roaming wild in the Bronx — turning “very vicious” and biting a bewildered onlooker who thought he was the one flying high.
“It bit me!” said the victim, who only gave the name Mike while recalling how he thought he was “buggin” when he first saw his fowl attacker strutting a West Farms street just before 8 p.m. Wednesday.
The peacock, an escapee from the nearby Bronx Zoo who is now nicknamed Raul, then went on the lam, hiding all night up a tree in the Krystal Community Garden on East 180th Street before finally flying home at 11:19 a.m. Thursday.
Alerts on Citizen had warned that “911 dispatchers state the peacock is very vicious.”
Mike told an onlooker in a video interview at the scene that he’d been “standing outside chillin’, smoking and whatever” when he saw the large, colorful pheasant casually strutting its stuff.
“I thought I was buggin’! I was like, Yo, there goes a motherf—in’ peacock!” he recalled, saying he assumed he was just too “high.”
As he and others started filming, the peacock fled. “It started running up the hill toward traffic and we had to keep the bird safe,” Mike said in the Citizen app video.
“We chased it,” Mike said, with him and others trying to corner it next to a gate to stop it running into traffic.
“It pecked me! Grabbed my pants and s–t,” the ruffled-sounding victim said. “Then the motherf—er flew in the tree! I didn’t know they fly!”
Eyewitness Chris Gutter told ABC 7 that the escapee went on the attack when people “got too close.”
“Raul wasn’t having it,” he said, using the bird’s new nickname. “Raul took a peck at him.”
The FDNY confirmed it was called to an animal bite and treated the man at the scene for a minor injury.
The Bronx Zoo confirmed Thursday that the escapee is thought to be one of its many “free roaming peafowl that live on the grounds.”
“The birds roost in trees at night,” spokesman Max Pulsinelli said — adding that they were worried the mass of gawkers at the scene would “prevent the peacock from being able to return to the zoo on its own.”
“Peafowl are not dangerous,” he stressed, saying they “move through the park with guests on a daily basis.”
But “like many other animals, peafowl rely on a flight response when they feel threatened,” he said.
“When cornered, they may react and peck to protect themselves. This is why we are asking people to give the animal space.”
Thankfully, the peacock finally “flew back onto zoo grounds under his own initiative at 11:19 a.m.,” Pulsinelli said.
“We kept an eye on the bird this morning as he started to move around at dawn and fully expected him to return to the zoo as he did,” he said.
“We were confident in our staffs’ ability to handle the situation.”
Cops and park officials joined onlookers in clapping as Raul made his safe journey home, with others gleefully shouting “Yes!”
“I’ve been living here for years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said 65-year-old neighbor Joe Barrios.
“This is our neighborhood, he is part of our family,” he said of the errant beauty.
Others, meanwhile, feared that some of those at the scene had nefarious plans, with Starr Davila, 27, saying she heard people “talking about capturing it and selling it.”
“The peacock belongs in the zoo,” said Davila, the group leader for an after-school program.
Despite the kerfuffle, some seemed less surprised by the latest adventurer in the city that never sleeps.
“Just a normal day in New York City,” said Aniya Drake, 38, who arrived just in time to film Raul returning home.
Still, she conceded that “it was exciting to know that the peacock returned safely.”
“It was just a beautiful sight,” Drake said. “I loved it.”
