This week has been bizarre, even for us.
The boy-who-has-a-car-he-cannot-drive, sat in the passenger seat of my car, weary from his long day at the House of Fries. He leaned his head against the window, watching the drizzle fall from the sky. As we arrived home, his alertness level elevated to orange, he sat straight up and said, “What the fu…?” (He caught himself one consonant sound short of profaning in front of his mother LOL)
I followed his gaze to behold…
A peacock.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my life. But I have never seen a peacock strutting around on my lawn.
“Ummm, mom, do you see that?”
I was sorely tempted to say, “See what?” just to mess with him, and then tell him that I’d heard that buying a car and not getting the repairs done, forcing your mother to continue to haul you around town, can cause hallucinations, but I didn’t have the heart.
So I said yeah.
The boy disembarked the automobile slowly, and looked at the bird.
The bird looked at him.
I ran for my camera.
When I got back outside, the boy was staring up at the roof. Strutting up the steep incline, then hopping onto the missing-a-few-bricks-chimney, was the peacock.
The boy was in awe. He said, “It took a run at it, like a plane taking off, and hopped up to the porch rail, then onto the gutter, then started walking up…there.”
And so it was.
Kinda vulture-like, huh? LOL
It started raining harder, so we went inside, but I kept checking and it was there late into the night and early into Sunday morning. I knew it was there early Sunday morning by the gawd-awful noise it made. A peacock’s
“call” is quite similar to the noise a cat makes when you accidentally step on it. Only louder. Lots louder. Like air horn loud.
At 5 AM I heard the horrific sound. I thought the cats were gettin’ into a smackdown with a raccoon, as the little black-masked boogers like to sneak up onto the front porch in the dead of night and eat the cat food. The cats are protective of their food supply, and will snarl fiercely at the bandits, who, depending on their mood and degree of hunger, will either lumber off, or accept the challenge.
I staggered outside and heard the wretched screeching coming from above. The peacock appeared to be metrosexual, and was preening and sending instant messages to his decorator. I staggered back to bed and covered my head with a pillow. When I crawled out of bed later in the day, it was gone.
Meanwhile, my book cover was being generated, and the author photo was uploaded. The back cover is supposed to have a faux marble background with a descriptive passage (subliminally calling to you to, “Buy Me, buy me” LOL) and my portrait up in the corner. Except something went terribly, terribly wrong, and my picture is bleeding. Not like religious stigmata kind of thing, but the background bleeding through the picture. I realize that a woman having a porcelain complexion is a good thing, but when your face looks like a slab of marble…. it’s pretty freaky LOL
I went to the live chat help, and requested an explanation. I stumped the assistant momentarily. I imagined myself showing up on the staff, “Freak of the day” bulletin board. Then he suggested I make sure all of the images are in the same format, remove everything I’d uploaded and start all over.
Staggering back to bed and covering my head with a pillow again is sounding better and better.
Posted by Marti @ 
Peacocks used to be the staple yardbirds in the South.. the ultimate avian metrosxual, that a good way to describe them! Their caterwauling reminds me of my childhood in Knoxville.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:40 am
Sounds like a great start to the day Marti.
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:42 am
I remember coming across a peacock as I was taking a shortcut through one of those hoity-toity neighborhoods. The damn thing just sauntered in front of my truck, cool as you please, causing me to slam on my breaks. The little bastard then jumped on my hood. I had to shoo it away with my umbrella. Not once did anyone come looking for their wretched bird.
I’ll take a plastic pink flamingo anyday.
June 22nd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Listen, maybe put the peacock on the book cover. Not that it’s prettier than you are….I’m just sayin’……
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
My favorite part was when you thought about “gaslighting” your son. Do I see what, dear? Hee hee.
Close to my house there is an over-population of peacocks, but they don’t reach my house yet. In case they ever do come, I have 3 cats!
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:42 pm
we have peacocks here sometimes. for a while we had about 4 or 5 of them. and they had no problem jumping up to the roof or into the trees. and they do make a god-awful noise. altho they are beautiful to look at. one thing my parents really hated about having all of them around too often was the amount of bird shit on the roof. they are big birds…so they have bigger poo than your average cardinal or something. Hopefully he doesnt decide to take up a permanent residence like ours did.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Oh wow. I know folks who had peacocks. I find them very neat creatures. I actually have some peacock feathers. hehe No, I’m not a peacock murdered.
I found Emu’s runnin’ around in my yard before… and opossums, skunk, raccons, etc… it’s always something.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I am still trying to make the transition from the Metro-Peacock to the marble faced author book jacket here. Wonder why you didn’t post that one? Oh… may be, because you didn’t want to start a flurry of blog activity over the religious stigmata of your transformation? ~ jb///
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:57 am
LOL, you totally should have said “See what?” Sounds like something my dad would have done to me growing up. He used to beep the car horn at random, and then act all befuddled when I’d yell at him about it.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Hmm that’s kinda weird but I find it amazing to find a peacock around town. lol! By the way, regarding to the avatar pic you sent. I cant install it since I am in wordpress and I am using gravatars from www.gravatar.com . You can upload your picture there so everytime you comment to sites that supports gravatar your pic will appear. Actually you can install gravatar on your blog as well. They have instructions on their site. TC
June 23rd, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Hi Marti! Long time no ’see’! I love this story! My Aunt had peacocks and they are some noisey buggers! Sorry I haven’t been around much, had to deal with a out of whack back. Was in bed-like position for months! (Thanks Doc, now I weigh 20 lbs more!) I have also started a new hobby that has consumed me, digital scrap books! Keep ‘em coming Marti!
CYA, Cheryl
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Ah, we had a peacock show up at work one day. I worked in a house for a building company. The boss liked the bird. He thought it made the display home look more exotic. However, the lumps of “do-do” left behind was disgusting. In the end, for fear that a customer might slip over in the stuff, my boss contacted a wildlife park and they came and took him to his new home.
June 25th, 2006 at 12:16 am
Neighbors about 1/4 mile or so in the woods behind us raises “exotic” birds of various kinds and, several years ago, had some peacocks. Fortunately, though, none of them got loose so their noise making was a ways off in the distance, and tolerable.
We’ve had problems with critters getting at the cats’ food, too. We generally kept it inside and only put it outside when one or more of the cats showed up. Sometimes we would forget to bring it in in the evening. It’s a little disconcerting to hear a noise outside and, when you check it out, there’s a stray dog or cat eating, an o’possum at the cat food baring it’s teeth at you, or, even worse, a skunk munching away. Not too long ago, our automatic cat food dispenser was gone off the front porch. Figuring a stray dog had picked it up and hauled it off away from the front door, we started looking for it the next morning. No sign of it anywhere.
When I mentioned it in a discussion at work, one of the other guys, who lives just down the road from us, said that it was probably a bear. Now we’ve lived in this house out in the country for 25 years and never seen any sign of bears, so I was skeptical — until I saw on the Little Rock news where a bear had been spotted and, eventually, tranquilized in the largest city in this county and, just three miles from us, in a smaller community, the schools had gone into a “lock down,” keeping all kids in their classrooms, when a bear had been spotted on the school grounds. Who knows? — never did find that cat food dispenser.
June 25th, 2006 at 12:35 am
I love that line “The peacock appeared to be metrosexual, and was preening and sending instant messages to his decorator.”
Great pictures as well!
When I was younger my family spent a couple of years in Taiwan courtesy of the US Air Force. Our first jet lagged night there in a strange country we were in a hotel in downtown Taipei. It was near the botanical gardens and we’d only been asleep a few hours when, at local sunrise, the peacocks started screaming. My sister and I were convinced that murder most foul (fowl? sorry) was happening on the streets.
I’ve finally caught up with my AW Blogroll and gotten you on it - just wanted to come by and say Hi.
June 25th, 2006 at 11:06 pm