But when a peacock showed up in their Spanaway neighborhood three summers ago, they didn’t know what to think.

The Miksovskys have since taken a liking to the bird, which often roosts in one of their oak trees and eats the corn they set out for visiting mallard ducks.

But sometimes the peacock, which they’ve affectionately dubbed Bubba, gets aggressive. And the manager of the manufactured home community next door is getting sick of it.

“Since April there’s probably been a dozen times when he’s charged somebody or attacked somebody,” said Laurie Hubbard, who manages the 40-lot Oakridge Manor.

“He’s making things unlivable. One of the residents had to hold him off with a shovel recently so that he could get his family in his car.”

Bubba can usually can be found sitting on people’s porches around the intersection of 232nd Street East and 37th Avenue East.

No residents have reported serious injuries, Hubbard said, but Bubba sometimes bites and scratches people, particularly men.

He has even begun to test the patience of the Miksovskys.

A little over a week ago, Jody Miksovsky called animal control because Bubba kept flying at her husband when he was trying to do yard work.

“I carry a broom with me, and when he gets ambitious, I use it,” said Ted Miksovsky, 88.

Animal control officers came out the next day but couldn’t find the peacock, said Lisa Drury, supervisor of the animal control division of the Pierce County Auditor’s Office.

“Usually if they’re not at least semi-confined, there’s not any way we are able to catch them,” Drury said.

“If someone is able to pin it in their garage or a shed or something, then we can go and get it,” she said.

Drury said the Auditor’s Office hasn’t seen any peafowl-related injuries since it took over animal control services in 2006, but it gets a fair number of calls about the birds during spring mating season.

If officers catch one, then they try to give it to an exotic animal keeper or aspiring peafowl owner.

Residents throughout the neighborhood say they keep squirt bottles handy in case they encounter Bubba.

“He tries to attack my husband when he’s out pulling weeds,” said Jennifer Rhan, 39. “For some reason when you dig in the dirt, that gets him. It’s a daily thing.”

Peafowl are native to India, Nepal and Sri Lanka – not the Pacific Northwest, said Paul Povey, lead keeper of the Asian Forest Sanctuary at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma.

Povey said people often order the birds off the Internet and keep them as exotic pets. He surmised that the peacock in Spanaway was a pet that someone abandoned.

“People get peacocks and they don’t realize how noisy they are and how dirty they are, and all of a sudden they’re kicking the peacock out somewhere,” Povey said.

Point Defiance has 13 peafowl that roam the grounds, all of which are accounted for. Occasionally others appear. Zoo workers assume that they are abandoned pets.

Povey said peacocks can become territorial during mating season, which usually starts in spring and concludes in July. “The males can get quite vocal,” Povey said. “If you’re not used to their displays, it can seem sort of aggressive.”

A peahen showed up in the Miksovskys’ Spanaway neighborhood about two weeks ago, but residents say she usually doesn’t cause trouble.

Neighborhood kids said they find the birds intriguing.

“The girl is really ugly and the boy is really beautiful,” said Mikayla Minzey, 8. “It usually is the other way around.”

“He looks like a million eyes looking at you,” added her sister Alexis Minzey, 6.

But Hubbard worries that someday a child – or the peacock – is going to get hurt.

Hubbard and the Miksovskys said they’d like to see the peacock captured safely by people who know what they’re doing, rather than by an angry neighbor.

“I don’t want him hurt,” Hubbard said. “I just don’t want him here.”

Melissa Santos: 253-552-7058