New Orleans municipal bird

A blast from the past.  I let you guess who is your humble narrator.

I was in City Park this morning watching the geese.  There were a few Canadian geese, like I'm used to seeing, but there were also the more humdrum, farmyard variety that seem more exotic to me since I've never lived on a farm.  

I am moving soon to another part of town.  I am in the process of purchasing a house to call both home and headquarters since I moved to New Orleans with every intention to stay.  I told the mailman the other day and he declared it was good news.  "That makes it official," he said as he shook my hand.  Everyone says that and thanks me for making my permanency a little more permanent.  "We need everybody we can get," they say with what sounds like faint praise.

I know New Orleans zoning is fairly lenient about keeping chickens at home.  I wonder how the regulations regard geese.  I was pricing X-mas goose this weekend and, much like in Boston, a goose goes for about forty bucks.  It had better be a fine bird.  If I kept a goose at home, assuming I could find someone to butcher and clean it for me, that would be a $40 savings if I didn't mind eating a pet at Yuletide.  

I have to admit, I am surprised I don't see more of another kind of bird either in City Park or anywhere else in New Orleans.

In a city that is always on display I would think a peacock is a natural fit for the Crescent City.  I see their human equivalent parading up and down Canal Street and Magazine Street and Decatur Street every day.  I am sure they are South Carrollton Avenue, Jefferson Davis Avenue, Robert E. Lee Boulevard, and St. Claude Avenue as well.

I don't have any recommendations to make New Orleans a better place but one:  More peacocks!  I happen to know where you can buy them.  If a tenth of the population raised a peacock and set it free, New Orleans would be a more beautiful place.  A royal bird befitting a royal city.  A peacock should be on the city seal.