Most people know Elvis Presley loved animals. Almost nobody knows that for a while, live peacocks roamed the lawns of Graceland, strutting around the most famous house in America with their tails fanned out. It looked magnificent. It lasted right up until the birds noticed something shiny parked in the driveway — and declared war on it.
Elvis genuinely wanted a zoo at Graceland. That’s not an exaggeration. Over the years, the property housed donkeys living in an empty swimming pool, a turkey named Bowtie, a pair of wallabies sent over by fans in Australia, a chimpanzee called Scatter, Great Danes, a basset hound, a Chow, and a Pomeranian. There was even a dedicated Bird Room, right off the famous Jungle Room, kept for his collection of birds. Among the additions to all this were the peacocks.
The problem with peacocks is that they are extremely territorial and not very bright about mirrors. When a peacock sees its own reflection in something shiny, it doesn’t think that’s me. It thinks that’s a rival, and it attacks.
Elvis had a driveway full of some of the shiniest cars in America.
Inside the Graceland Archives with Angie Marchese
Graceland’s own archivist, Angie Marchese, has told the story on the record, and it’s wonderful. The peacocks caught sight of themselves in Elvis’s gold Cadillac — and started pecking the paint off it. Not a scratch or two. Enough that, in her words, the car needed a whole new paint job. Anyone who has seen a peacock go at a car knows they don’t do it for thirty seconds. They work along one panel, then the next, then round to the other side, for hours.
So the King of Rock and Roll made a decision. The peacocks were evicted. They were sent off to the Memphis Zoo, where they could admire themselves without costing anyone a respray. The wallabies eventually went the same way.
But here’s the ending nobody expects, and it’s the reason this story is worth telling. The birds got banished — and then Elvis put them back into the house forever. In 1974, two large stained glass panels of peacocks were installed in the doorway between the living room and the music room. They were designed by his then-girlfriend Linda Thompson, made by the Laukhuff Stained Glass Company of Memphis, and cost around $9,345. Today, they are among the most photographed features in the entire building, and fans adore them.
And there’s a reason he chose that particular bird. Elvis was a serious student of religion who read constantly about faith and the meaning of life. According to Graceland, he picked the peacock because it is an ancient Christian symbol of eternal life and resurrection. So the real animals wrecked his Cadillac and got shipped off to the zoo. Their image stayed in his house, in coloured glass, and it’s still there almost fifty years later. The peacocks lost the battle and won the war.