Peacock Feathers in the Basement Collecting Dust

I don't have a feather duster. But today I found my peacock feathers collecting dust on a top corner shelf, deep in the recesses of my basement. I must have acquired them in the 70's when I married and established a household. That's a lot of years of dust. The question now is, what am I saving them for?

Should I ask some sort of WWMD question? (What Would Martha Do?) It's not a fair question--she has so many houses and a building for every purpose under heaven. The horse stable she designed for her cute Frisian horses was so nice she was able to host a dinner party inside!

Allow me to tell my peacock story and to explain why these saved feathers have held special significance for me. The following old photos were taken on my farm in the 50's and 60's. Their fading images have been enhanced.

It seems that my memories of peacocks date back to my earliest memories of life. Above, a lovely full grown male peacock is pictured in the fenced-in yard of my childhood home. The green lawn, the developing peony and the length of the cock's tail are indicative of springtime. The peacock does not develop full plumage until his third year of life and loses almost all his tail feathers every late summer. Each year we were able to collect  feathers which were strewn about the farm. Sometimes we had less than a handful of peafowl and sometimes more--reaching a peak of a dozen, as I recall.

Another photo, taken  by the back corner of our yellow farm house, and as in many photos, a kitten:

The peacocks would show off their stuff for any audience, often just cats.

Bread crumbs or cake I tossed may have attracted more cats

A favorite cousin and I pose with peacock

A well framed scene--with cousin, cats and me

I'm sure the peacock would have preferred showing off his fan of feathers for a "harem of hens." The peahens, however, never paid him any attention--even though he would ruffle and flap his brown rear feathers and lean down over them, shaking and rattling his entire magnificent tail.

In the photo below there is one hen (the one with the green neck) that was being courted with a fine display and probably a little mating dance too--with lots of feather action--all ignored.

Peacock showing off for one hen and three young cocks

The peacocks were as bird-brained as the chickens that kept them company in the hen house. The peacocks would admire themselves in a shiny hubcap of a car or in a mirror which was set up against the picnic table. Here is a photograph of my Dad holding puppies, a very concerned mother dog, "Nippy,"  of course, a cat, and the mirror which the peacocks loved to look into. The saying proud as a peacock made sense to me, but upon reflection, the peacock undoubtedly thought he was facing a rival male in the mirror, and the proud references his propensity for showing off, as in "strutting his stuff."

My face in the mirror!

I have many other tales of our peacocks which will never be told. The most fun thing was feeding these pets left-over chocolate cake, which I recall my Mom made fresh nearly every other day when our family of five was all home. Some of the birds were coaxed to eat out of my hand. The other fun thing was facilitating a new hatch of babies. The peacocks were encouraged to lay eggs in one of the spare hen houses, but would often choose the woods--a grove of trees enclosing part of the homestead. My mother would sometimes remove eggs from the nests and store them in a cool place, encouraging the hen to keep laying until there was a full nest. Often the eggs or young peababies did not survive. I don't think I have any photos of  our babies. I just learned that they are more correctly called peachicks, but we always called them peababies. The San Diego Zoo calls a group of peafowl an ostentation or a pride, which seems appropriate.

We raised the peacocks purely for my mother's enjoyment, not for selling or eating. We sold a pair only once. Only once a peacock was hit by a car on our country road (they would often spread in the sheltered ditch--much to the amazement of all those who passed by). My mother, with sadness and depression-era frugality, fixed peacock breast for dinner that night. The eggs were probably too precious to ever sample--it never occurred to me to ask. My mother loved the birds and was famous for saying "Once peacocks, always peacocks."

If you are interested in seeing something of a peacock's mating dance or hearing his haunting, high pitched alarm call, there are a few videos on YouTube. I didn't find any that were exceptionally good. If you beg me, I can do an imitation of their call!

The assortment of feathers above. . . I'm saving the chunk of feathers that has been sealed together for decades with wax. The other various short ones and the brown tail-support feathers were all thrown in the trash!

Peacocks remain popular in art and fashion. I recently received this pillow from my daughter, Marissa:

The ever-colorful dictator of Libya is in the news this month:

Gaddafi

Peacocks are popular in Long Boat Key, Florida. I took this photo of a very tame, free-roaming peacock, in January of 2011. There have been issues with population control there and costly removal procedures had to be implemented.

 Every movement and behavior and noise a peacock makes are familiar to me, like an old childhood friend. Growing up with peacocks was one of two known unique things about me. Do you know the other?