I haven't been doing much lately. The house is a bit of a mess. I do spend a lot of time scrolling aimlessly through FaceBook or Pinterest, or just clicking through YouTube videos - not watching them, just scrolling to see what's there. Just wasting time, letting it go by.
I know myself well enough to know that this indicates that there's something I should do that I don't want to - maybe make a phone call or schedule an appointment. In this case, it's writing a blog post that I don't want to. But this has been the year of unloading on this blog - getting stuff out of my head and down where I can look at it. And I need to write about peacocks.
I was about 7 or 8 when I remember first seeing a peacock - impossibly beautiful, impossibly exotic. (A book I read - "Why A Peacock" - said it felt so strange when he paid money for his birds; he thought it would be more appropriate to trade a handful of magic beans or a book of spells). I yearned for that bird. I didn't think it would ever be possible.
But we moved out here, we had land, and I got peacocks. Sometimes, when you yearn for something as a child and finally get it as an adult, the luster fades. That childlike joy is missing. Not in this case - I adored having those birds around. I caught my breath every time I saw that otherworldly beauty in my everyday life.
Nature being nature, and having both a male and a female peacock, eggs happened. I didn't want my female brooding them. They nest on the ground, and we have predators - raccoons, foxes, coyotes. We thought we should take the eggs. So we got an incubator. And 28 days later, the miracle. I watched as a line was chipped around the circumference of the egg, then as the top was pushed off and a wet little chick unfolded herself. It was a miracle we were to see over and over again, but it never became routine. If I was at home, I had to drop whatever I was doing and just gaze at this unbelievable sight.
Peachicks are hatched with attitude. They know exactly who they are. And at a week old, they already practice their strutting, fanning out their little half in tails.
It got a little (a little?) out of hand. If you take a peahen's eggs, she just lays more eggs. We ended up with dozens of little peachicks. Some we kept. Others we gave away, or advertised and sold. The chicks were an impossible amount of fun.
But also a lot of work. Breeding season starts in April and ends in September - so we were caring for loads of chicks from May through October (at six weeks you can tell the boys from the girls, and that's the age where we would sell them). And to sell them you have to deal with people, which can get so very annoying. There was also the issue that our birds were all free-range, intermingling, which meant that inbreeding was going to happen. After a few years we gave up the craziness of having all those chicks living on our back deck, but it sure was fun.
But we were still the people with peacocks. And I never got over adoring them - catching that gleam of deep turquoise in the sun, dancing with the displaying birds, laughing when they would come up to the door and honk for treats. That raucous scream they made, so at odds with their appearance.
They became part of our identity. You'd be talking about pets with someone, and mention peacocks, and they would get that look on their face - "you have peacocks?" Or if someone would come visit and suddenly be in awe - "is it all right if I take a picture?" You'd call service people who had been here before - maybe the tree guy, or the person who cleans the air conditioner. You'd give your name and address, and then hear "Oh, yeah - you're the ones with the peacocks, right?"
Peacocks live a pretty long time. Bruiser (that first egg I saw hatch) was 21 when a raccoon killed her - but she was showing her age. The last birds we kept were hatched in 2006. They, like any other pet, become part of your life. When you step out of the house in the morning, you check the tree (they roost in trees) or do a count if they're already down. When you get home from work, you check on them. And you simply enjoy them.
2006 - 2021. We did lose a couple of birds in that time, one to a dog, a couple to racoons. But there were a half-dozen that we had that time, so you get used to the idea that nothing will happen to them. Until last year - I wrote about losing a bird, quite likely to a bobcat. Then the others. One I found and nursed for two months until I lost him. (people will ask - why didn't you cage them? Well, the big pen got destroyed in the hurricane. And they're not completely domestic birds and almost impossible to catch). Finally I had one bird left. As the months went by, I relaxed slightly - but I always checked on him first thing in the morning, and several times during the day, and made sure he was in the roost at night. I admired him, and danced with him, and fed him treats.
And then, around the end of October, he was on his roost one night, and gone the next morning.
People have wondered why I don't get more - I've even had offers. One reason is that I would have to get a pen built - they have to be kept confined for a few months to establish their territory. The real reason is that they live for 20 years, and it's unlikely I can live out here that long. I loved having them for the 25 years or so that I did, and it's time to let that era go.
But it hurts, which is why I couldn't write it. I've lost so much of myself in the last 2 1/2 years. Chunks of my identity. I was Bob's wife. I was the person who proudly drove the 21-year-old car (I wrote about giving that up). I was the woman with nine cats. Eight. Seven. Six. Now 5. And I was the Person With Peacocks. Was. Sometimes I feel like a past tense person.
A couple of weeks ago a tree branch landed on the house and caused a leak. When the roofer came out (who has worked on the house before) he greeted me with "hey, Miss Ann - you still have peacocks?"
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