CREEK ROAD GANG
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Proud as a Peahen
Kristin Flick Stridcopyright 2010
Cleaning out the attic of my old house always jolts my memory. Today it was an old John Wanamaker box filled with peacock feathers that I found in a drawer. It made me chuckle and remember.
How my oldest brother, Bill, talked us into it I don’t remember, but one Christmas we kids gave our parents a pair of peacocks; or should I say, a peacock and a peahen.
Over the years, Dad had bought us dogs, rabbits, ducks, and a goat that we fed Dad’s cigar butts and eventually buried in the back yard. My father always stopped at “PUPPIES FOR SALE” signs, and one time bought a pony for his first grandchild, much to the surprise of her parents who lived in a three bedroom split.
He was thrilled with the peacock present, but my mother was more pragmatic. She politely accepted the impractical gift and marched off to the library to research East Indian names for the peacock couple.
However, on first viewing the birds, Dad was immediately taken by the peahen’s plainness in contrast with the male’s exquisite plumage, bright and iridescent in the sun.
“She’s as ugly as your cousin, Pearl,” he exclaimed to my mother. So Pearl it was. Shandu, my mother’s choice, was overruled, and the peacock became “Arnold,” after cousin Pearl’s husband, Arnold, an organ salesman, from Buffalo.
We were assured that peacocks could stay out in any weather and would happily roam the fenced-in yard and pool area, looking ornamentally pretty when summer arrived. Jerry, my husband and animal lover, could not believe they could withstand the snow that came that Christmas night. While everyone had after-dinner drinks, he tried to catch the two and put them in the tool shed for the night. As they perched on the patio awning frame, Jerry attempted to spring his six foot, two hundred and twenty-five pound body upwards to catch them by the ankles. That is when we learned peacocks have sharp claws and can jump seven feet high.
Pear and Arnold spent an uneventful winter on the property. Occasionally, Arnold would fan and flutter his colorful tail trying to get Pearl’s attention but she seemed to ignore him and as spring neared, his strutting became a daily fruitless occurrence. It was mating season and Arnold knew it. But despite his nightly love calls that sounded like raspy squawks, Pearl refused to capitulate to the peacock’s passion.
Mom and Dad went on a trip that spring, and their neighbors, Dick and Jane, offered to look in on and feed Pearl and Arnold. Dick, a retired navy man, who hadn’t been excited since Pearl Harbor, was slow-moving and unflappable. My brothers had secretly nick-named him “Flash.”
Jerry and I were expecting our third child, and we lived with our two toddlers fifteen minutes away. One morning, as Jerry was dressing in his stockbroker’s three-piece-suit, we had an emergency call from Dick.
“The peacocks are loose.”
After their six months of fenced in confinement and contentment, something beckoned them out of the yard.
“I’ll stay in my suit….grab my work overalls…you drive me down. I’ll catch the birds….take the train from there. I can’t be late…gotta be there when the market opens today.”
I quickly dressed the kids, plopped them in the back of the tiny station wagon ( no seat belts then) and we all hurried to my parents’ house to find Dick , dressed in what resembled a “Ramar of the Jungle” leisure suit, calmly smoking a cigarette and looking to the seventy-foot pine trees that surrounded the yard. There was our girl Pearl, wrapped in herself, smugly looking down at us. Contrary to Dick’s earlier report, Arnold was not loose, but was on the inside of the fence, hysterically screeching for his beloved Pearl.
Jerry began the rescue attempt by hurling small rocks high up into the giant pine, hoping to scare Pearl down. Next he tried knocking the branches with a broom, and finally he threw the broom towards Pearl, only to get it caught high above us. As Dick stared at the tree and smoked, Jerry donned his “Big-Macs” over his pin striped suit, hauled the twenty foot ladder from the garage, and climbed up to coax, cajole and plead with Pearl. While the kids watched their dad, and whined for their breakfast, I called the zoo for advice. A recording gave me their hours. Nothing was working. Jerry called his office.
“Where are you? The market is flying, up fifteen points.”
He was missing the first stock rally in over nine months.
”I’m trying to get a peacock out of a tree,” Jerry answered, not believing it himself.
It was Dick’s suggestion that we call the fire department. “Maybe they can spray her down with a hose.”
Jerry dialed, “Hi, I have a peacock caught in a tree and….”
“You have a cat in a tree?
” How my oldest brother, Bill, talked us into it I don’t remember, but one Christmas we kids gave our parents a pair of peacocks; or should I say, a peacock and a peahen.
Over the years, Dad had bought us dogs, rabbits, ducks, and a goat that we fed Dad’s cigar butts and eventually buried in the back yard. My father always stopped at “PUPPIES FOR SALE” signs, and one time bought a pony for his first grandchild, much to the surprise of her parents who lived in a three bedroom split.
He was thrilled with the peacock present, but my mother was more pragmatic. She politely accepted the impractical gift and marched off to the library to research East Indian names for the peacock couple.
However, on first viewing the birds, Dad was immediately taken by the peahen’s plainness in contrast with the male’s exquisite plumage, bright and iridescent in the sun.
“She’s as ugly as your cousin, Pearl,” he exclaimed to my mother. So Pearl it was. Shandu, my mother’s choice, was overruled, and the peacock became “Arnold,” after cousin Pearl’s husband, Arnold, an organ salesman, from Buffalo.
We were assured that peacocks could stay out in any weather and would happily roam the fenced-in yard and pool area, looking ornamentally pretty when summer arrived. Jerry, my husband and animal lover, could not believe they could withstand the snow that came that Christmas night. While everyone had after-dinner drinks, he tried to catch the two and put them in the tool shed for the night. As they perched on the patio awning frame, Jerry attempted to spring his six foot, two hundred and twenty-five pound body upwards to catch them by the ankles. That is when we learned peacocks have sharp claws and can jump seven feet high.
Pear and Arnold spent an uneventful winter on the property. Occasionally, Arnold would fan and flutter his colorful tail trying to get Pearl’s attention but she seemed to ignore him and as spring neared, his strutting became a daily fruitless occurrence. It was mating season and Arnold knew it. But despite his nightly love calls that sounded like raspy squawks, Pearl refused to capitulate to the peacock’s passion.
Mom and Dad went on a trip that spring, and their neighbors, Dick and Jane, offered to look in on and feed Pearl and Arnold. Dick, a retired navy man, who hadn’t been excited since Pearl Harbor, was slow-moving and unflappable. My brothers had secretly nick-named him “Flash.”
Jerry and I were expecting our third child, and we lived with our two toddlers fifteen minutes away. One morning, as Jerry was dressing in his stockbroker’s three-piece-suit, we had an emergency call from Dick.
“The peacocks are loose.”
After their six months of fenced in confinement and contentment, something beckoned them out of the yard.
“I’ll stay in my suit….grab my work overalls…you drive me down. I’ll catch the birds….take the train from there. I can’t be late…gotta be there when the market opens today.”
I quickly dressed the kids, plopped them in the back of the tiny station wagon ( no seat belts then) and we all hurried to my parents’ house to find Dick , dressed in what resembled a “Ramar of the Jungle” leisure suit, calmly smoking a cigarette and looking to the seventy-foot pine trees that surrounded the yard. There was our girl Pearl, wrapped in herself, smugly looking down at us. Contrary to Dick’s earlier report, Arnold was not loose, but was on the inside of the fence, hysterically screeching for his beloved Pearl.
Jerry began the rescue attempt by hurling small rocks high up into the giant pine, hoping to scare Pearl down. Next he tried knocking the branches with a broom, and finally he threw the broom towards Pearl, only to get it caught high above us. As Dick stared at the tree and smoked, Jerry donned his “Big-Macs” over his pin striped suit, hauled the twenty foot ladder from the garage, and climbed up to coax, cajole and plead with Pearl. While the kids watched their dad, and whined for their breakfast, I called the zoo for advice. A recording gave me their hours. Nothing was working. Jerry called his office.
“Where are you? The market is flying, up fifteen points.”
He was missing the first stock rally in over nine months.
”I’m trying to get a peacock out of a tree,” Jerry answered, not believing it himself.
It was Dick’s suggestion that we call the fire department. “Maybe they can spray her down with a hose.”
Jerry dialed, “Hi, I have a peacock caught in a tree and….”
“You have a cat in a tree?
“No, a peacock, well, really a peahen.”
“Some guy has a cat up a tree.”
“No, a peacock,” Jerry yelled into the receiver.
“What kind of cat is it?”
“That’s it,” Jerry slammed down the phone. “I’m going to work. That ugly bird can sit there all day until I get home for all I care.”
The next Paoli local train into the city was in seven minutes and the station was right down the street. The children were once again scooped up and put in the back of the car, where they lurched to and fro with each change of gears of the stick-shift car. I dropped Jerry off at the station, took a deep breath, and drove back to find Dick yelling, “She’s down, she’s down. You can catch her now.”
It looked like an old-time movie as I jumped back in the car and, at accelerated speed, with more bumps and jolts, made it to the station before the train pulled out. Babies crying, horn honking, and a crazy pregnant lady, upsetting the tranquility of the Villanova commuter station, hollering something about Pearl being out of her tree: Jerry knew it was us. With limited composure, he joined us for one more drive up the hill and one more try for the elusive peahen.
We raced to the base of the trees calling. “ Pearl, Pearl, where are you Pearl?”
We didn’t see her in the trees. We looked in the forsythia, under hedges, in frantic hope that she had stayed put on the ground. But Pearl was gone.
With a feeling of final defeat, we turned to go and opened the gate into the yard. And there she was, on the patio, huddled close to Arnold, with a proud look of victory on her face.
* * *
Biographical Note for Kristin Flick Strid: I started writing stories and poetry as a young mother of five, sneaking time at my typewriter while the children napped. In the early 80’s I enrolled in an autobiographical writing class and have been there ever since. Every Monday morning, I would steal away to my secret place, behind the heavy wooden doors, in the parlor of the old Victorian house, where we read each other’s work, talked, and listened to each other. It was there, engrossed in the works of my classmates, that I forgot if we were out of milk, if the dog needed his shots, and didn’t care what was for dinner. I made many life-long friendships and began to learn the art of good writing. My published works include The Swimming Lesson, an eighty-three page collection of poetry, two children’s stories, and inclusion in Monday Mornings, an anthology of short stories and poetry. See poems by Kristin Flick Strid published in our September 2009 issue and October 2009 issue.
