He helped Hugh Hefner deal with peacocks at the Playboy Mansion.
And now, “Mr. Peacock” Dennis Fett has offered up his services to a Surrey neighbourhood where the flamboyant fowl are running amok, making loud noises and fighting their own reflections in the sides of cars.
He was a guest on CKNW’s The Lynda Steele Show on Tuesday.
Fett has floated his name as the one to help deal with a situation in Surrey’s Sullivan Heights neighbourhood, where they’ve been seen wandering the community after a homeowner cut down the tree where they spent much of their time.
One resident is reportedly feeding the birds against city bylaws. The police have become involved after a bylaw officer was punched after one person was told not to feed the animals.
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Fett knows a thing or two about peafowl — he’s a peacock farmer who lives in Iowa, where he makes YouTube videos with his wife Debra.
And he has stories to tell.
Fett once visited the Playboy Mansion, where magazine founder Hefner kept peacocks, and did it “better than anyone I know, other than us,” he said.
He spent four and a half hours at the mansion advising Hefner’s gardener on how to keep peacocks from defecating on a spot where they were preparing to have a photoshoot with the Playboy Bunnies.
READ MORE: Surrey peacocks are in so much heat, they’re fighting their own reflections
Now he’s turned his eye to Surrey, and for $1,500 a day, he said he could help people “live peacefully” with the birds.
First, he said, the community has to decide what to do with the birds — whether they want them there or not.
Should they decide to rid themselves of the peafowl, then Fett would come in and help to capture the animals.
“The community needs to come together and say, do we keep them or do we capture them all out of existence,” he said.
“Or do we capture some and keep a certain amount of peacocks in the flock and try to help people understand some of the behaviours of what they’re doing to cause the problems themselves?”
Fett also shed some light on actions that don’t deter peacocks.
Sounds, he said, don’t make a difference because they’re already used to human noise.
READ MORE: Surrey homeowner cuts down tree where dozens of peacocks spent their time
“They’re used to sounds that people make in your neighbourhood,” he said. “That’s normal for them.”
One caller into CKNW said he sprinkled cayenne pepper on some plants in an effort to drive the birds away.
Fett hadn’t heard of that one before, and he wasn’t a fan of the idea.
“They don’t really have any tastebuds to my knowledge,” he said.
“It’s something I probably wouldn’t recommend, if it gets in their eyes, it could cause a problem with vision and that would not be good.”
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