Unless something amazing happens this will be my final peacock post. Raja, the perennially dissatisfied peacock left us for what he hoped would be greener pastures. One fine spring day, I sent Roo out with the camera giving her instructions to try to take his picture with tail fanned out. I could never seem to get one with the sun illuminating his brilliant colors. He soon grew nervous at being closely followed by a girl with a camera and decided to hide under the silver lace vine. Still denuded from winter, the vine covered Raja well enough , except......oh, the trials of having a long, glowing-green tail!
He slept here on the roof of the tiny guest-house rental. Often he would gaze up into the nearby pine tree with longing, and crouch ready to spring upward........ then his courage would fail him. He would settle down for another long night completely open to the elements. As you may remember, we felt terrible for him when we woke on winter mornings to find him encased in ice or snow or both.
Then one spring evening I looked up and saw that he'd made it into the tree! We were all excited for and proud of him! Go Raja!
A few days later, he'd worked himself to a better place, higher on the tree and with much better protection from the elements. Of course, by this time, spring had sprung....
By now, radiating with the full flush of success, and more than a touch of spring fever , he's decided to call for a mate. His plaintive cry echos for miles, but no female appears. Higher in the tree he ventures, and each day or two finds him roosting a bit higher up. He seldom comes down to feed until ten o'clock in the morning. He has started to call all night, every night, even in the dark of the moon. That may explain the late mornings! Here, he spreads his tail as much as possible as he luxuriates in the morning sunlight
If you look closely, that sunlit picture was zoomed at the same time this was taken and you can barely make him out as a light spot against a dark spot on the right side of the tree fairly close to the trunk and beneath the furriest topmost branches. By now, Tigger and her roommate, who love Raja as much as we do, have admitted that his nocturnal wails fall through their roof and into their sleep. They must rise early for long days of work and school, and can't luxuriate in bed as Raja does. We started thinking of ways to catch him and return him to his owner where he would have a supposedly joyful reunion with his mate.
Then Raja took matters into his own hands..well wings. From the tip-top of his pine tree, he'd located some birds-of -a-feather. He may have known they were there for some time and had been trying to call them in here. When that didn't work, he adopted the Mohamed to the Mountain philosophy and took off to make the acquaintance of two pairs of peacocks who live, as the peacock flies, about a mile and a half from us.
It happened suddenly. There was a knock on the door and a woman stood there telling us our peacock was at her house. I explained that the peacock residing with us was in the back. I'd seen him there about an hour ago. But, of course, it was him.
For a few weeks, his cry penetrated the dusky evenings plaintively floating in from her direction. Eventually, she caught him and returned him to his owner. I knew exactly when that happened because the lonely sounding cry now came floating down the street from his owner's location. Didn't he like his mate? Was there something inherent in her nature that offended him? Something that caused him to flee the coop in the first place? Was he simply rebelling against the concept of prearranged marriage?
I never hear him anymore. I hope that means he's settled in to wedded bliss and found contentment as last.
