The misdeed at the center of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Winden Stathan Rowe case took place on Sept. 8 on a rural road in the Kennett Square area.

The nature of the offense, according to a police citation: Rowe “did allow her peacock to run loose & defecate at the entrance to a school causing a physically offensive condition.”

The charge: disorderly conduct — committed by Rowe.

Rowe, a therapist who does not deny that her bird, Gemini, relieved himself outside the elementary school across the street from her house, was found guilty in a summary trial at a district court last month. She is appealing to a county court, arguing that the charge is neither applicable, because she did not personally commit the disorderly act, nor proportionate, because it could show up in a criminal background check and affect her professional license or job lecturing at a Philadelphia university.

“It’s so ridiculous,” said Rowe, 39, who was charged a $185 fine. ″I have to explain to people that I didn’t do anything wrong. My bird pooped.”



Gemini, a peacock who pooped outside a school in Pennsylvania. His owner was cited with disorderly conduct. (Winden Rowe)

This is not the first case of public angst over peafowl feces; residents in one Miami neighborhood have been at odds over what the Miami Herald termed the “prodigious piles of poop” of feral birds. Conflicts over loose pets are also not uncommon, though they typically involve dogs.

But a survey of news reports suggests that disorderly conduct charges or citations involving animals and feces almost always involve a human doing something disorderly. Last year, for example, a Wisconsin woman was cited after allegedly wiping dog feces from her shoe onto a neighbor’s blanket. In 2015, a Massachusetts woman was charged with disorderly conduct — as well as assault and battery — after allegedly striking a police officer with a bag of dog waste.

At least one U.S. jurisdiction, Spring Arbor Township, Mich., specifies that disorderly conduct can apply to people whose animal “trespasses in a damaging way” on others' property. The Pennsylvania law applied in Rowe’s case is less clear. It says people are guilty if they create “a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose,” and do so with “intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof.”



Winden Rowe holds her peacock, Gemini. Rowe argues that disorderly conduct, of which she was found guilty, does not fit the offense. (Nate Watts) (Nate Watts)

Demetra Mehta, a Philadelphia criminal defense attorney who handles disorderly conduct cases but is not involved with Rowe’s, said they typically involve people accused of fighting or making excessive noise. The only animal-related variety she knew of involved people doing something dangerous, like shooting a raccoon in the city.

“I have never had a case where the action was imputed to something other than the person doing it,” Mehta said. “I’m at a loss for words.”

The police officer who cited Rowe did not respond to a request for comment. According to the citation, authorities were called by the principal of the school, Bancroft Elementary. It also notes that Rowe was warned on Aug. 2. The principal referred questions to Kennett Consolidated School District Superintendent Barry Tomasetti.

The decision to involve police “was based solely on prioritizing the safety of our elementary school-aged students,” Tomasetti said in an email. “In the past, these birds have damaged an employee’s vehicle and have continually defecated on the sidewalks our students use as they enter the doors to our school. Additionally, we have been advised by local police that the peahens were potentially dangerous as they could act aggressively toward our young children.”

Rowe, who also keeps dogs and hens on her 2.5-acre property, disputes this. She said her two peacocks have long waddled free with no problem; Gemini, with his magnificent plumage, is something of a “celebrity” in the neighborhood, she said, as well as a gentle playmate to her 4-year-old niece. She acknowledges that Gemini began to wander more after her two peahens were killed by a predator this summer — trying to sow his wild oats, perhaps — and that he once threw himself against a school employee’s car, an incident she insists did no damage.

When an officer warned her Aug. 2 about peacock poop at the school, Rowe said she promised to rein the fowl in. But then, before dawn one November Saturday, a storm blew open the new door on her barn, and Rowe said she “woke up to the unmistakable sound of a peacock freaking out, which sounds like a wild turkey.” Gemini came home the next day, she said — but security cameras at the school, she’d later learn, had captured him sheltering and defecating outside the school during the storm.

The police officer showed up Monday and wrote the citation.



Gemini was filmed defecating at the entrance of Bancroft Elementary School in Kennett Square, which is across the street from Rowe's house. (Winden Rowe)

According to Rowe’s account, which could not be independently confirmed, three school district officials appeared at her trial. One was the principal, who testified that she was physically offended and annoyed by the peacock poop, Rowe said. Video of the act was shown, “like those tapes of when the 7-Eleven gets held up,” Rowe said, but “all it is is a peacock marching back and forth across the entrance to the school.”

Rowe said she figured the judge would find the whole thing absurd. Instead, he found her guilty.

Rowe now has an attorney, Gary Katz, who said he has previously taken on cases involving horses — Kennett Square is a big equestrian area — but never a peacock, though he added that he has met plenty of the birds and has “never had any issues” with them. He said he was befuddled by the charge.

“If everyone filed something like this because an animal came over to their side of the road and defecated, where are we going as a society?” said Katz, who will represent Rowe at an appeal hearing scheduled later this month. “This was a very innocent act by a very docile peacock, and for some reason, somebody wanted to make a complaint about it. And they prosecuted it.”

Rowe, whose peacocks are now in an enclosure, also argues that context is key. Only about a half-dozen houses sit on her road, and most have hobby farms, she said. The school brought more traffic when it opened in 2011, but she said residents still value the area’s bucolic feel, and the peacock matter has chipped away at that.

“We have Canada geese flying over all the time pooping. We have deer that are pooping behind the school,” Rowe said. “We have everything on the road, from horses to pigs to chickens to peacocks, and maybe goats at one time. People are raising animals and kids, you know?”

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