On this Day in Music History: Bono’s Pet Peahen Runs Amok

On this day (June 23) in 2011, Bono was involved in fowl play, or rather his pet peahen was.

A female peacock belonging to the U2 frontman had escaped from her dwelling and was wreaking havoc on the artist’s Dublin neighborhood of Killiney, according to a report from The Guardian.

The vocal and ornery bird had for two days been disturbing the peace – loudly screeching and leaving droppings on front gardens – and disgruntled neighbors took to alerting the authorities. When one resident, Susan McKeon, called the local police, however, she was met with the words of an angered officer.

“They said: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, it’s Bono’s,’” McKeon explained. “He said to me that they had put too many man-hours into Bono’s peacock.” When asked what she should do about the petulant pet, the answer was less than helpful. “They said: ‘I don’t know, you can do what you want with it,’” the neighbor said. “I replied: ‘Well, supposing I kill it and put it in the oven?’ and he actually said: ‘I don’t care.’”

With little help from the authorities, residents took to calling local radio stations to air the matter. “It went into my neighbor’s house next door and left a lovely message on her lawn,” one resident described.

Bono is not the first musician whose unorthodox pets have ruffled feathers. One of shock rocker Alice Cooper’s snakes and on-stage co-stars once escaped down a hotel toilet only to resurface later in a room that country star Charley Pride occupied, having survived for weeks on sewer rats.

And even earlier this year, rapper Rick Ross’ pet buffaloes escaped the confines of his 280-acre Georgia estate, called the Promised Land, and wandered to his neighbors’ homes to graze. Ross has reportedly been converting a portion of his estate into his Promise Land Zoo, adding a pair of lions to his exotic collection last year. Hopefully, those pets won’t be escaping anytime soon.

(Photo by Han Myung-Gu/WireImage)