A Dozen Frightened Peacocks

About 6 years or so ago, a friend brought to my attention an add in the papers listing 12 peacocks free to a good home. I forwarded it to Mother, who agreed that this was exactly what she needed. So off we went to pick them up.

The shelter they were temporarily housed at was located way out passed Big Lake, which just happens to be one of the coldest spots in the area. As it was December, when the sun sets at 3:00 in the afternoon, it was quite cold and dark by the time we headed out there after work. I think the temperature was down in the twenty or thirty below range.

Mother had saved up feed sacks to put the birds in, slicing breathing holes in them with a knife. Like most animals, the birds would - theoretically - calm down once their eyesight was blocked, and the sacks would make it easy for us to stack them in the back of the Bronco like cordwood. The birds would be safe, comfortable, and compliant till we got them home to Mother's barn.

When we arrived at the shelter, the owner took us around back to the shed where they kept them. It was small, roughly 4-feet square, with barely room enough for the birds and their shedmates: 3 doves.

Peacocks are very bid birds, by the way. Until you get right up close to one, you just don't realize that. They also do not like being chased after by three strange humans, nor do they enjoy being stuffed into sacks, however safe it may be for them.

Picture if you will a very small shed filled with a dozen screaming peacocks who are throwing feathers and shit (yup, that is one of their defense mechanisms: no one wants to eat a bird that is covered in shit) all over the place. Throw three doves into the mix that are also screaming and throwing feathers & shit around. Now place three adult human beings in there and turn the temperature way down so that everybody's breath fills up the place an impenetrable fog, obscuring visibility down to barely a few inches in front of your face, and you get a fairly good idea of what we had on our hands.

We got it down to a science eventually: you grab on to anything you can get your hands on and just hang on for dear life, stuffing madly into a sack all the while trying to protect your face from bird wings, claws, beaks, and shit.

Towards the end, we had maybe three or four birds left to catch. Mother and the owner of the shelter had a few of them cornered, so I had backed off to the opposite corner to give them room to maneuver the bird(s) into the sack(s).

Apparently the remaining birds had the same idea: get as far away as possible. This meant finding the tallest perch they could fine as far away from THAT corner as they could get, all the while protesting as loudly as possible, which I'm sure involved sound waves capable of causing permanent damage to my eardrums.

Unfortunately, that tall perch I mentioned just happened to be my head.

As calmly as I could, so as to not startle the surprisingly LARGE bird clinging to my head with claws the size of a velocoraptor's, I called out to Mother, "Um... I could use a little help over here!"

Mother and the owner both turned about and said, "Oh my gosh!" and came rushing to help me.

Finally, exhausted and elated, we got the last bird stuffed into a sack and loaded into the Bronco, and headed back to the farm.

Along the way, we started to thaw out.

Neither one of us said anything for a while, but you could see both of us stealing glances at each other and making awful faces. Finally mother said, "Boy, peacock shit really stinks when it's thawed out, doesn't it?"

We were covered in it, from head to toe! Thank goodness Mother's farm house has two showers.