It is a long-cherished wish for Yvette Langbroek, manager of the Zuylen cemetery in Breda: peacocks in the cemetery that offer comfort to the bereaved. “Peacocks symbolize immortality. They are the birds that connect heaven and earth. And even if you don’t believe in that at all, it is still a beautiful animal to look at.”
“For five years I have been trying to get a peacock couple here and that is actually prompted by a memory from my childhood. Then I went with my grandfather and grandmother to a cemetery where there was also a zoo nearby. There were also peacocks with those beautiful colours,” muses Yvette.
The main cemetery in Breda wants to develop more as a park. Yvette Langbroek: “We want it to be an invitation to take a walk. The animals give visitors a sense of endearment and wonder, in order to make saying goodbye to a loved one more bearable. They ease the sadness.”
For now, the three peacocks are still behind wire mesh. “For the next three or four weeks they will be fed in their pens. When they are released later, they will also return here to eat and sleep. But they may also sleep in the trees.”
Incidentally, there is one male and two females. This is also to keep him calm a bit. Langbroek: “A male peacock that cannot find its female starts screaming and becomes restless and that is not good for the people who want to visit the park here quietly.”
The new peacock enclosure was made by students of the building school in Breda. “And that is also a special story. We have a beautiful avenue in our park with chestnut trees, seven of which were sick. They had to be cleared. If we could make planks of them, we thought. building school, used to be our neighbours, asked if they wanted to make a residence out of those planks.”