Midsummer: Peacock Splendor and Bug Repellent
I’m thinking about asking the good folks at Avon to change the name of their insect repellent from “Skin-so-Soft” to “Skin-so-Tasty”, just to be on the same page as the mosquitoes and biting flies that followed me around the field this morning. I was a two-legged walking marinade for them and have the welts to prove it (no photographs, please. Some of you are eating). But the wild blackberry vines gotta be trimmed so Patrick can mow the paths this afternoon without coming back to the house striped in scratches, so…into the woods I go, smelling delicious to a thousand hungry, buzzing relatives. And here I thought I was pretty high on the food chain. Perspective, my dears. Perspective.
Meanwhile, under the bed in the upstairs guestroom I came across a stash of more than five hundred peacock feathers, shed and collected one at a time over seven years when we had a modest family strutting about the acreage, catching us off-guard with their regal beauty. It’s nearly August, and I lean toward wistfulness as the summer turns this corner without that gorgeous flock entertaining us and leaving their plumage behind on the grass like so many beautiful toys at an upscale daycare center. Sparky was our first, left behind by the land’s previous owners, with the real estate agent trying to figure out how to catch him and take him back to his own farm. He gave up as we moved forward to signing the closing paperwork and yes, we wrote Sparky into the contract, taking out a 30-year mortgage on 41.1 acres and a peacock (when real estate agents gather for conventions and conferences, I’ll bet this was one of the “strange but true” stories swapped over cocktails after the day’s breakout sessions).
Sparky roosted in the old dairy barn built at the sloping end of the driveway, perching serenely on the apex of the roof, pointing his tiny crowned head south and crying out at sunset in plaintive hope for a mate. The first time we heard it, we thought a frightened child had somehow become trapped in one of the rusty milking stanchions and ran toward the sound like heroes on their way to a rescue. Over time, Patrick learned to mimic the sound just close enough to set Sparky off in broad daylight, much to the startled delight of visitors and family. The two of them would call back and forth until someone ran out of vocal energy or the laying flock would charge ‘round to corner of their coop to see what the commotion was all about. For weeks, Sparky called out in vain, no one answering his audible personal ad except Patrick, and so turned his attention to those chickens (a bird is a bird, after all) who paid him no never-mind as he splendidly shook out and arranged his glorious feathers into a majestic half-circle fan of iridescent attractiveness. Oh, they’d look up with their beady little eyes and consider the spectacle for a moment, then resume their aimless ground-pecking, leaving Sparky deflated and lonely still. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?
But perseverance paid off and one day, a lovely peahen (I named her Claire) came strolling down the driveway looking for the lovelorn vocalist who’d lured her away from who knows what nearby farm with his irresistible siren call. She sized him up, looked about at his land dowry and settled herself in, scouting out her options for ground nesting real estate. She ended up choosing the spot right below the bathroom window, overgrown with lamb’s-quarter, velvetleaf and pokeweed (I suspect she thought the berries would add a touch of decorative whimsy), having already laid her decoy clutch of eggs several yards away in the overgrowth behind the old potting shed to distract any predators from the real deal. We only discovered this ground nest when Patrick was busy with the weed whip, coming dangerously close to decapitating her as she roosted among the stalks. She didn’t budge, even as the snapping plastic string felled the greenery above her head. Patrick jumped backwards when we saw her there, her eye calm and steady, his respect for the protective maternal instinct deepened in an instant. She stayed there until four of the little ones hatched. We didn’t see them until they were old enough to walk safely beneath her sheltering wings and one of them poked its head out of her plumage one afternoon as she walked slowly across the grass below the silver maple on the ridge. We gave her a wide berth as our faces hurt from smiling so wide.
As often happens in the natural course of things, only two of the four hatchlings made it to adulthood—one male, one female. Sparky kept his distance as they grew and eventually took to rearing the young boy (Blue) while Claire kept close to the girl (her name escapes me at the moment but I’m sure it was cute). Blue grew fast and strong as Sparky taught him how to employ his fan to catch what’s-her-name’s eye (with varying degrees of success). We’d often find father and son circling each other in a dizzying game of male dominance while Claire and her daughter browsed alongside the chickens in contented indifference. That indifference must’ve grown some pretty deep roots over the summer because come late August that year, both mother and daughter disappeared into the meadow and didn’t resurface. We never found a feather, a carcass, anything to indicate they’d met an violent end. They just left. I envisioned them picking their way across the neighbor’s soybean field, all their little peahen belongings tied carefully in red handkerchiefs on the end of long walking sticks, chatting about this and that as they set out for their next adventure. Sparky and Blue may have spent a few days looking for them but kept at their circling rituals until Sparky eventually got too old to play. We found him next to the old dairy barn late one summer evening, his feathered body fully intact directly below the spot where he’d perched years ago, calling out for company. Blue took to hanging out near the chicken coop, opening his fan every evening for the girls’ entertainment, like a long-running Las Vegas act. When we finally found his remains behind the old goat barn a few years later, we accepted the end of our exotic peafowl-rearing days. A year later, we started raising Boer goats for meat, but that’s another story.
I remember vividly those hot and sunny afternoons, walking an easy lap from the house down to the barns and the chicken coops, stooping to pick up the long and colorful plumes that Sparky and Blue had shed, marveling at the way the light would catch the golds and coppers buried among the green and deep teal strands, making the feather’s eye even more distinct. I don’t remember being harassed by biting flies or no-see-ums or mosquitoes (though I’m sure they were out there, hungry and searching). Just fantastic color and midsummer contentment. Funny what our minds sort out and focus on…
Five hundred feathers later, I’m perched on the apex of my memories, hearing the echoes of a sky-piercing love call and happy that I had a front row seat to one of the sweetest love stories a flock of birds could offer up.
Looking forward to you, August. And thanks for the flashback.
