Harley the peacock who made a temporary home at a Shepard Hill Road address earlier this summer has found a permanent roost.

A friend of resident Susan Nalley has welcomed the colorful bird to her farm in Pennsylvania, Ms Nalley said this week.

In a recent e-mail, she wrote: “So, Harley came into our lives on July 24, and left on August 25 — what an interesting summer experience!”

During that month, Ms Nalley had begun calling Harley Birdie Bird, who “definitely needed a proper home.”  Although Harley was “was fine to have around,” he left droppings all around the property. And what she and boyfriend Neil Unger first thought was a natural loss of feathers, she said, “It became clear to us that [Harley] was actually picking out his feathers instead of shedding them, and we both recognized that as a stress signal, and knew he needed a home with proper care.”

With a link to to an August 1 Newtown Bee article that introduced the peacock and his temporary family, she reached out to friends online. Ms Nalley said this week that she contacted “friends on a farm who had a little boy who really wanted a peacock.” On Monday, August 25, that friend from Pennsylvania arrived “with a crate and a blanket, and, after an unsuccessful try, we managed to wrangle him into the crate.”

Ms Nalley later received a text from her friend saying that the bird “made the journey fine, was properly quarantined and cared for,” and that the little boy was “ecstatic to have him.”

Overall, she said the story ends with “happy people all around.”

Her month spent with the peacock began unexpectedly one late July afternoon. As Ms Nalley had described it, the wandering peacock chose a late afternoon to walk into the backyard on July 24. Harley seemed content to occupy the back deck and yard. Mr Unger and Ms Nalley learned that the bird would eat cat food, “so we got it cat food,” she said.

The couple was “glad to have made his acquaintance, but eager to see him reunited with his owner,” Ms Nalley said. At the time, they believed he had wandered away from his original home, and thought that he may have come from Monroe. They contacted animal control offices in both Newtown and Monroe, without luck in finding someone nearby who was missing their bird.

Animal control staff member and kennel keeper Matthew Schaub had said that peacocks are nothing new to Newtown or Monroe. Peacocks have been kept as pets and gotten loose, but, he had said he was not sure about Harley’s circumstances.

Recently Monroe Animal Control Officer Ed Risko, who often talks with staff at Newtown’s Brian J. Silverlieb Animal Care and Control Center, said that when he finds a roaming bird in Monroe, he checks with other towns. Peacock sighting are not uncommon and happen “every season,” he said.

People keep them as pets and they escape the yard. ‘We’ve got birds all over town; people think they are pretty,” Mr Risko had said. In the past he has had luck with several local farms, garden centers, and Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, who were “gracious” enough to take the exotic animal off his hands. “Don’t feed them,” he warned, or they will stay.