The Fantastical Peafowl Adventure



You guys, you guys, I have seen some weird stuff in my time in Portland, but this was amazing. I have been meaning to write more on this blog, but I kept feeling like the first entry back had to be amazing, because you cant have a 2+ year absence then be like, so snap peas are awesome, amiright?  Although snap peas really are great, but tonight is the night it happened and I was like, THIS. This is my intro to a better, badass blog and it is also the closest I have ever actually come to hugging a bird and both of those things are pretty great things.

Ok so, for started, it has been a long week. A lot of heavy lifting, probably a little dehydration, and not a lot of sleep.  Does this have a point you say?  Yes it does.  Be patient.  So I'm bringing centerpieces out to my van for an event, and as I'm putting boxes in the car, a peacock comes strolling down the lane like she owns the place. To say my heart stopped would be an understatement - this is like a dream come true.  Now, I love all worldly creatures, but peafowl have a special place in my heart, amongst unicorns, cats, and sea otters.  They are epic and awesome yet terrifying a little bit and they have rad stuff coming out of their heads like a 20's flapper and this was REAL LIFE and she had stuff coming out of her head like 3 feet away.   SHE WAS SO CLOSE.  The stuff!!  The head stuff.  it was right there!!  I could have flicked it.  But I didn't obviously because you don't just flick head stuff.

Now here was the problem - my phone was in the house and since husband is out of town, I would obviously need to make him jealous that he missed out and for that I would need picture proof.  I ran like I have never ran before, came back out with my phone, and peacock was nowhere to be found.  I was running up and down the block, and a man gets out of his car across the street and I yell frantically "Have you seen a peacock?!?"  He did not respond to me.  It is at this point that the dehydration comes into play because while I know I look insane to this stranger, what if I am actually insane and there was no peacock?  Did I imagine the whole thing?  I refused to believe this but I was really not gone very long and I don't think peacocks are known for their speed.  Well they might be I don't know. But anyways, just when I was giving up hope, that peacock poked its head over the rock wall in front of my neighbors front yard and the skies parted and the angels sang or maybe that was me I don't know.

I am at once elated by the fact that I am not completely mad and also I will now have proof of this peacock, but I only get its butt as it walks away into her side yard, and from that angle, it may as well be a rooster, which is another animal we have seen wandering around our street so it would not be the epic "booyah" to husband that I had dreamed of.  

Fades right into the background.

To give you a little bit of backstory, I have never once spoken to or even seen this neighbor, and her house is elevated so that you would have to walk up steps to see into her side yard.  That, or climb up her rock wall in the front of her property, which is obviously what I did because PEACOCK.

So I'm up there, but there is a big bush blocking my view of the peacock, and that is when I hear neighbor's side door open.  She starts saying "shoo! shoo!", and for starters, I didn't think people really ever said "shoo" in real life, I thought it was only something evil people said to magical mice in fairy tales, but secondly, are you for real lady?  YOU ARE SHOOING A F$%#ING MAGICAL PEACOCK.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?  As she is shooing, I clearly have no regard for the fact that I am a crazy lady peering into her yard, and I start yelling "Is there a peacock in your yard???"  Of course I know there is a peacock in her yard, but I had high hopes that this could start a conversation along the lines of - her: yes there is a peacock in my yard, would you like to take the steps up like a normal person and take a picture there, why are you wearing that outfit (I was moving stuff all day and it was laundry day I wasn't dressed to impress OK), me: why in the world would you shoo a magical peacock, that kind of thing.

She did not seem to hear me.  I yelled it again, louder, and this time she shut the door.  I once again deliberated if I was insane, and what if this wasn't actually a peacock but a pigeon and I was hallucinating.  Did I even exist? Because the last two humans I had encountered ignored me and the only creature that seemed to acknowledge my existence was this pigeon.  With that possibility, I decided I did not want to be arrested so I climbed down the rocks and walked up into my yard, a bit deflated.  I get to the top of my driveway, and there is the majestic beast, strutting her stuff on top of the fence between our yards like a f$%#ing badass.

To the left...

To the right...

Homegirl knew how to STRUT.

Homegirl knew how to STRUT.

It was everything I ever dreamed it would be.  I took picture after picture, and at times it actually seemed like she was posing for me. I tried talking to her, coaxing her to let me adopt her.  I told her she could live in our yard, that sort of thing, I promised her food, although truthfully I don't know what peacocks eat and what if they eat mice and I'm not ready for that kind of responsibility so I immediately regretted it.  She turned to say goodbye, generously letting me snap some more photos of her profile, before she hopped down, albeit not gracefully, she kind of made this "oof" sound like my elderly cat makes when she jumps down from the bed when she needs to sneeze, and then this marvelous, effervescent creature exited my life.

I turned to go, whereupon I ran into my downstairs neighbors very shy cat, who had never let me within 15 feet, and I thought this is it, this is our bonding moment.  I said, "Did you see the peacock?"  The cat ran away.  This was not our bonding moment.  

Alas, my adventure with the peacock was complete for the day, and to show the gravitude of this experience, I didn't even floss today, and I floss every day except for very special occasions, kind of like a rewards system, like I was literally standing at the bathroom sink saying out loud "I don't have to floss today because I saw a peacock in my yard", like somehow the peacock appearance will provide some kind of magical barrier to tooth decay.  Fingers crossed she will accept my offer to join the Von Fancypants family because if I get an amazing book deal out of this epic story and we have to move to Bruges for some book deal reason it would be pretty amazing to try to bring her on a plane and "accidentally" let her loose and just be like "oh, is my peacock eating your peanuts?  So sorry about that."  Those words have never been uttered before in the history of time*, and I would like to be the first to say them.  I will end it with ever more photos of her glorious presence:

You can kinda see her if you peer through.