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, a likely escapee from the nearby Bronx Zoo who is now nicknamed Raul, remained on the lam early Thursday, hiding up a tree in the Krystal Community Garden on East 180th Street after an all-night standoff.
Alerts on the Citizen app 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 “will prevent the peacock from being able to return to the zoo on its own.”