Earlier this month I mentioned in a post on solastalgia how sad I was that the peahen living at the top of a giant fir tree in the neighborhood seemed to have gone missing during the cold, windy days of winter.
So imagine my delight when I headed out for a walk to my local library yesterday and spotted her pecking through a neighbor’s yard. In the nearby bushes a gray cat watched from a safe distance.
Then I noticed the peahen seemed to have grown quite a bit bigger, and was rather more iridescent than she used to be. Have I been wrong all along to call her a peahen? Was she actually a young peacock, and now here she he was all grown up? Or was this a new addition to our neighborhood wildlife?
There was a noise behind me, and I turned to see the driver of an Animal Control truck watching too, marking something down on a clipboard.
I continued on to the library. I didn’t want to witness what might happen next. I hope to see our peacock again soon, but I’m not holding my breath.
If the weather doesn’t give us cataclysm, our childish fear of nature will.



March 16, 2008 at 10:30 pm |
hi–
there is a huge fear of nature isn’t there? But not for us. We didn’t grow up glued to a computer screen. We were outside. We were also not medicated as children, either. There was just a huge article that now the meds are in the food chain, and the water in the LAT.
March 17, 2008 at 7:20 am |
That business about meds in the water supply is scary, and you alerted me to it a couple of weeks ago. My medicine cabinet is nearly empty, and what finds its way there tends to expire before it’s all used up – even something as allegedly benign as Tylenol. But how can I protect myself from what’s in the water?
Truly cataclysmic.
March 19, 2008 at 12:18 pm |
Maybe the peahen went away for a while and met a man, whom she brought home to marry. That happened to C.C.’s former landlord.
March 19, 2008 at 12:56 pm |
Of course the other possibility is that she’s taking hormones in preparation for FTM transgender surgery.
Good news: I saw her touring the neighborhood again yesterday, so Animal Control didn’t pick her up.
March 20, 2008 at 1:20 pm |
Or HTC (hen to cock) surgery.
April 1, 2008 at 6:28 am |
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