Fortuna's runaway peacock becomes a countywide folk hero

El Chapo has turned Fortuna into a citywide search party. The runaway peacock has been roaming neighborhoods since escaping in mid-March, and the bird’s continued freedom has made him a recurring character in Fortuna Happenings, where residents have spent the last two or three months swapping sightings, theories and jokes.

For Pepe Matias, the bird is more than an online curiosity. He said he has been posting at least once a week to ask for leads, while multiple attempts to catch El Chapo have failed. Matias works the graveyard shift at a hospital, which has made the search harder even as neighbors call in tips from across town.

The peacock’s backstory helps explain why Fortuna latched onto him so quickly. Matias said he bought El Chapo and another bird, Ovejo, as chicks in Redding three or four years ago, then later brought home a female peacock from Santa Rosa. El Chapo flew off when Matias tried to clip the birds’ wings and his son startled him. Since then, the bird has become a familiar sight around town, with dozens of sightings turning a backyard problem into a shared local obsession.

The response has gone beyond online chatter. At least two local businesses offered gift cards or discounts to anyone who could safely capture El Chapo, a small-town gesture that added to the bird’s legend and gave neighbors a concrete reason to keep looking. One resident called him “the bird that united us all,” a line that fits the way Fortuna has rallied around a peacock that refuses to come home.

Matias said peacocks eat bugs, fruits and seeds, and he has suggested that anyone who spots El Chapo should try luring him into a garage or other enclosed area with food so he can be recovered without harm. For now, the bird remains loose, and Fortuna’s crowd-sourced hunt continues to blend humor, persistence and a kind of civic pride that only a small Humboldt County town could make its own.