The new neighbors soon came to collect their fugitives, but the cycle had begun. Escape, terrorize, and get captured. And if the neighbors weren't home, the terrorism phase could drag on for hours.

Shooing away these stubborn and determined birds was only an exceedingly temporary fix. They'd come back. And they grew more confident. And nastier. Like Donald Trump with wings.

The neighbors, apparently throwing in the towel when it came to building an effective peacock enclosure, offered to loan us a cage that we could use when they weren't home and couldn't come over to catch the peacocks themselves.

You heard me right. Instead of devoting time to reinforcing their pens, they decided to give us a crash course in capturing and restraining their peacocks for them.

Now in order to understand why my parents went along with this you have to understand that my dad grew up on a farm and was used to all sorts of animal wrangling. I'm sure he thought that this was a reasonable way to deal with the problem, and that it would be good for me to be in charge of catching the peacocks if dad wasn't around.

Let that sink in for a minute. I, as a twelve year old, was in charge of catching birds that were as tall as I was. What could go wrong?