Dante’s Beach, Ravenna

Daily life in Punta Marina, the next little town but one from me here on the Adriatic coast has gone globally viral after being portrayed as some kind of horror show worthy of Alfred Hitchcock.This frenzy of interest is a tiny example of how the media, all too often, will not, perhaps cannot, tell the truth.

It also shows how far too many people are so brain-washed about what matters in life that they are incapable of realising when perhaps God Himself is trying to tell them something.

Peacocks are sacred and symbolic birds. They also have a crucial connection with Ravenna that goes back to the early days of Christianity. No one knows why they are in Punta Marina but it is obviously as a result of some kind of miracle. There are about 120 of them, it is said.

Only a hysterical minority want to get rid of them, many of whom, it has to be said, are women. Plus the odd man whose shiny stainless steel chimney has been punctured by male peacocks attacking their reflections

Only a hysterical minority want to get rid of them, many of whom, it has to be said, are women. Plus the odd man whose shiny stainless steel chimney has been punctured by male peacocks attacking their reflections

Yet to read the headlines you would think that the town has been taken over by tens of thousands of them and that that their intent is evil like in Hitchcock’s The Birds and that as a result residents dare not risk coming out of their homes.

‘Invasion of the peacocks leaves Italian town crying fowl’ (the Times). ‘Italian village overrun by rampaging peacocks’ (the Telegraph). ‘These peacocks have taken over an Italian town’ (CNN).For two whole weeks, one Italian daytime TV talkshow has broadcast daily bulletins from Punta Marina about its peacocks as if reporting from the front line in a warzone.

It is all nonsense, pretty much.

Worse, the media herd bleats as one that the residents of Punta Marina object to the presence of the peacocks. But this, too, as far as I can work out, is nonsense. A lot of local people........

© The Spectator