A peculiar feathered friend visits rural Aromas
When you live out in the country, you get the strangest visitors
at times.
There’s nothing too unusual about that. Wide open spaces and few
fences add up to a situation where the neighborhood animals roam
freely
– sometimes too freely.
And so it’s not unusual for me to go out in the yard and feel
like we’re living in a mini-menagerie.
A peculiar feathered friend visits rural Aromas
When you live out in the country, you get the strangest visitors at times.
There’s nothing too unusual about that. Wide open spaces and few fences add up to a situation where the neighborhood animals roam freely – sometimes too freely.
And so it’s not unusual for me to go out in the yard and feel like we’re living in a mini-menagerie.
Of course, there are the neighborhood dogs – Bella and Bonita, a mother-and-daughter pair of Labradoodles, who drop in occasionally, and Bo, a friendly pit bull cross who is constantly escaping from his yard, to the agitation of his owners.
There are the wild things as well. Over the years, there’s been a steady stream of possums, skunks, mice, moles, voles, rats and squirrels that have passed through from time to time. That’s to be expected in a rural area.
I don’t love those animals so much, but I do enjoy seeing a few others, such as the covey of quail that lives down the road and scatters when I drive along; the gray fox that I glimpse from time to time; and of course, every so often, a deer or two.
Then there are the owls, hawks and falcons, the turkey buzzards and the crows. There are flocks of wild turkeys that pass through as well. I haven’t seen any right around the house but did get to see a flock of about 20 the other day on Cole Road.
And of course, there are slithery things such as gopher snakes and salamanders and red newts, and currently, a very loud tree frog who has taken up residence in a flower pot next to my kitchen door.
In addition to the wildlife, there are other beasties. We’ve had the occasional hen turn up in the back yard, a refugee from the neighbor’s coop. This annoys my dog, Charley, in all kinds of ways. Even though he’s not much bigger than the chicken, he’d just love to jump on it, and he has a fit while I shoo the chicken away.
But nothing prepared me for the recent stranger who came calling.
I stepped outside my back door the other day to find a very large blue bird making itself at home in my yard, pecking around and looking quite content.
It was a peacock. I had never seen a peacock at my house before.
The peacock didn’t seem particularly disturbed by my presence. In fact, it gave me an imperious look, as if to say, “Hey, buddy, I believe I was here first.
I was on my way somewhere, so I got in the car and left, believing that the peacock would be gone when I returned.
I returned. The peacock was still there.
It did disappear sometime later that day, although I don’t know when. And I thought, well, how interesting, and that’s the end of that.
What was really odd was I don’t know anyone who lives near me who has a peacock. I know there are some about two miles down the road, but it seemed unlikely that it was one of that bunch. So where it came from was a mystery.
A few days later, the peacock came back, and decided to hang out on our second-story deck.
Have you ever seen peacock poop? It’s rather substantial.
The peacock was having a grand old time up there and didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry to be anywhere else. After a few hours of this, I decided it was time to take matters in hand, and approached the bird.
It didn’t appear alarmed but it did finally get off the deck and onto the hillside, where it pecked around for a while more before heading off over the hill.
Cleaning up after the bird was not an exciting prospect, but it did give me a new catch phrase.
I could be heard muttering to myself, “Oh, peacock poop.”
Better than “bullpucky,” don’t you think?
