The senseless beauty in my life is gone. It had no purpose, but to make me happy when I saw it… And it did….every time. I remember I was turning 50 when I asked for a peacock, it was my midlife crisis. I needed beauty without purpose. Instead, I got chickens. Chickens are practical. They give you eggs and do not sit in trees and scream….but my heart wanted peacocks.
Then one day, several years later, a friend died and my husband thought I was not recovering quickly enough. He took me for a ride. To my surprise, it was a farm with peacocks. I picked out three young chicks and began the long wait for my beautiful peacock with trailing feathers and voice like a bent tin horn. I had only seen a full grown male peacock once in my life. It was at a zoo and I was a child. It flew over me, proclaiming the pure joy of beauty as its tail feathers tickled the top of my head. I was smitten, and here, now, I had peacocks of my own!
Peacocks don’t get that magnificent train of iridescent feathers right away. It takes two long years for them to reach maturity. That first summer, he began strutting about the yard and fanning his stubby tail for his two adoring females. The second spring showed great promise of the beauty he would become. I was not yet to have my peacock though. A neighbor’s dog jumped my fence and grabbed him before we could intervene. Jimmy chased it all the way back to the MC Mansion where the dog lived, but by that time it was too late. The neighbor simply shrugged and said we should have higher fences.
The girls wandered around listlessly all summer, they weren’t quite sure what their purpose in life was. They knew they were not chickens and finally, one ran off with a wild turkey I had raised and released. I pictured him like the bad boy in leather on a motorcycle, coaxing her to run away from the dull life of domestication.
But that fall, a friend gave me a wonderful gift. He had one too many peacocks for his ears and offered me one. He was beautiful. He was everything I expected and more. (His voice was probably a bit more than the neighbors expected too!) It was a struggle to get him out of his pen and home to room with the chickens, but we did it. He would remain there until he realized that this indeed, was his home.
As winter wore on, he grew the most magnificent feathers I have ever seen. They trailed from the perch from the ground and shimmered with each shudder or breath of air. At last his confinement was over and we released him to the yard. His female greeted him with a loud “BEEP” and he answered with an even louder “Toot”. These became their names forever. He fanned his tail and spread his wings in a stunning display. His blue head shone in the sun and the crown upon his head made him look like the king he was. He danced and rattled his tail feathers like sabers. There was no doubt that he would rule the yard.
He also ruled the night. He picked a spot, high up in a box elder tree as his evening roost. Since his mate had already begun her nest, she would not join him. Every evening at dusk and every morning, starting just before dawn he would call for her. “HEEEELLLLPPPP!” it sounded like. “HEEEELLLPPPP MEEEE!” The neighbors called to see if something was wrong, obviously I must be in the back yard screaming for help. Thankfully mating season only lasts a few months or we might have been run out of town.
Beep sat her nest, (which took me over a month to find, a female peacock is the exact color of dirt and the asparagus hid her bright green head) Toot, meanwhile, took to strutting around the neighborhood and displaying for anyone he thought might be impressed. This could be anything from the little girl next door to the clothesline post. He wasn’t very picky. Soon many of the neighbors come to love his visits and put out treats for him. You could almost tell the time of day, by where Toot was visiting. He became known as the ambassador of Williamsburg. People would drive by, hoping to see him. Children would call out in hopes he would answer….and he usually did. The township even had a special meeting declaring him “Protected”. He was their boy and he loved the attention.
In the six years he was with me, he made many friends and one or two grumbling people who disliked his call. Mostly it was peace. He grew more magnificent each year. His train reached over six feet in length and when he went into his yearly molt, it was like a neighborhood Easter egg hunt to find his discarded feathers. Nearly every house had a small bouquet tucked by their door or mailbox. Each time a child would bring me an animal, I would make sure they would leave with at least one, peacock feather, often taller than them. He fathered many chicks that now bring joy to others.
I was the one who benefited most from him. There isn’t always a lot of beauty in my life. I’m not one for exquisite paintings or jewelry. My uniform of the day is usually bib overalls and muck boots. I’d be described as a bit plain, I think. There is a lot of ugliness and sorrow to what I do. Animals come in injured by cars or torn up by dogs. They don’t always survive and sometimes, I have to help them into the next world. It can get depressing at times and tiring, very tiring. Yet every time, I looked out the window or walked in the yard and that bird came up to me, it lifted my spirits in a way nothing else could. He was beauty, for beauty’s sake. Someone once wrote “There is nothing more useless than a peacock”, he was wrong.
The world needs senseless beauty. It’s those unexpected moments that take our breath away that make it all worth the struggle. Toot, was senseless beauty. There was no reason for his magnificence. Blackbirds get females attention with only a piercing trill and a flip of feathers. Toot didn’t need all those heavy feathers. He seemed to know this, but it never bothered him that so many people think him useless. He knew his place was to bring that moment of breathtaking joy for simply seeing such beauty. That he did. To everyone. Especially to me, even on my darkest days.
I suppose, we should have built a pen large enough to house Toot and his “harem”. I thought seriously of it last year when a bobcat took one of his hens and 5 chicks all in one night, but how could I keep such beauty hidden. How could I break his heart and not let him make his rounds of adoring fans. Many people will say I was negligent. Maybe so. I feel I was unselfish. I wanted to share his unexpected beauty in a dull world.
Two mornings ago, I didn’t hear him call from his customary branch outside my window. He didn’t follow me along the rooftop as I went room to room getting dressed for the day. It was a busy day, and I was gone from the house for most of it, but I looked again when I got home. Yesterday morning, it was again silent. I really began to worry. It was snowing and blowing in one of those depressing spring snowstorms we get so often here. Toot’s girls were tucked snugly in their pen where the whole group was free to come and go. Toot was not there. Nor was he there last night, nor this morning.
I got up early today and went searching. I knew he would call in the soft hours of dawn. I heard nothing. I walked the yard and most of the block. Not a trace of him was found. The snow had mostly melted, so I could not see any tracks. Toot was gone. His girls followed me for a bit, as if they knew what I was looking for. The called out a few times, bun no answer came. We all returned to the house, quiet and confused.
I suppose it was the cat. It took a full grown goose earlier this spring and even a full grown peacock, would not have been a match for a large bobcat. He may have taken him from his tree while he slept. If he did it was quick and silent and not a feather is on the ground. I hope it was that way.
He was my diamonds, my bed of roses, he was my view of a shimmering lake and my beautiful gowns. He took the sunshine and shattered it into a million colors, just for me. He took my world and gave it beauty so deep that it would stop me in my tracks and I would say, “I’m so lucky”. I was. Not everyone gets a peacock in their life.