A New Reign Commences

Flannery O’Connor called them the King of the Birds. She also said that instinct, not knowledge, led her to them.

I had never seen or heard one. Although I had a pen of pheasants and a pen of quail, a flock of turkeys, seventeen geese, a tribe of mallard ducks, three Japanese silky bantams, two Polish Crested ones, and several chickens of a cross between these last and a Rhode Island Red, I felt a lack.

Flannery O’Connor, The King of the Birds from Mystery and Manners, 1957

I can totally relate on both points: the instinct and the lack. I’ve wanted peacocks for longer than I can remember. I think I’ve always wanted them, truth be told, though I may not have always realized it. Reading Flannery’s incomparable essay on the regal creatures several years ago stoked the embers of desire into a positive flame. A flame I’ve tended daily as I’ve passed the old chicken run on the morning constitutional with Caspian.

“That’s where we’ll keep them at first,” I’ve told him so often that I wonder he hasn’t preempted me and said it himself a time or two. “Just till they know this is Home. Then they can have the run of the place. It will be their Kingdom.”

But I had no idea that Someday would materialize into Now with such a delightful impetuosity on the part of my husband. He really outdid himself for my birthday this year.

He gave me two India Blue peacocks.

I am so in love. With Philip, yes. And with my wonderful birds. I got up the morning after we brought them home and stole out to the barn in my slippers and robe just to make sure they were really there and that I had not merely dreamed them. Two shockingly blue necks snaked themselves out from behind the crate we had brought them home in and two pairs of wide-awake, white-framed eyes regarded me, if not with interest, a least with the condescension of a faint acknowledgment.

It was at that moment, I think, that my love turned to worship. I can’t get enough of them, and they’re not even into their full plumage yet–two years old and in what Flannery endearingly (and aptly) calls the ‘ragbag’ stage. Their wing feathers are brown as the packed earth beneath their chicken feet and their backs and tails are striped black and white, just like the commonplace feathers of my very prosaic Barred Rocks. But there is nothing prosaic about these princes-in-residence: they bear themselves like the royalty they are and when the sun hits those feathers at just the right angle you can see the shimmer of a green that will put the best efforts of summer to shame. I sit or crouch or stand beside their pen and marvel at their every move, each glance of light and shadow producing some wildness of beauty that surpasses all that’s gone before.

I gave them names that reflect their noble lineage: Adhiraj (“king”) and Panav (“prince”). I’ve been bringing them oblations of the best I can manage: grapes cold from the refrigerator and raspberries warm off the vine, chunks of homemade bread and handfuls of Diana’s premium dog food.

“I want them to know that this is the very best place a peacock could come to live,” I told Philip.

He knows I am already their abject slave. They, on the other hand, would expect nothing less.

The one previous experience I have with peacocks is not one I’m necessarily proud of. It was in England, on an evening in May, and we were just crossing the lane to ‘The Trout’ in Oxford when a blood-curdling scream pierced the tranquil air. I grabbed Philip’s arm in abject terror, thinking someone must surely have been murdered on the river terrace out back.

“What was that?” I gasped.

Philip looked down at me with an incredulous smile.

“You want peacocks, and you don’t know what that was?”

Nevertheless, I am nothing daunted. I am well aware of all the stereotypes surrounding peacocks. Friends have chided me playfully over the noise and the penchant for flowers these birds seem so notoriously to possess. I smile with the smile that knows that sheep are not stupid and goats don’t eat everything and resume my adoration. I am fascinated. I am fascinated with their history and their adaptability. And I am fascinated with their symbolism in the works of O’Connor and Augustine’s figure of the Resurrection.

And I am honored that we can give such beautiful things a home with us, well aware that they may see it the other way around. 😉

The night we went to pick them out, my boys’ father put on a show for us. We had been chatting in front of the barn with the breeder and his wife and I had been casting wistful glances towards the strutting cock, trailing his gorgeous raiment through the dust behind him.

“I wish he’d display for us,” I sighed.

“Just wait,” our new friend grinned with a wink. “He won’t pass up an opportunity like this.”

It was hardly a moment before the bird turned to face us, every iota of royalty in the royal blue of his head and neck charged with a sudden electric thrill that held us mesmerized and took our breath. Slowly, rhythmically, the massive tail began to shake, feathers standing erect and trembling to life. With a great swoop it was up and over his head, a hundred green and golden eyes staring back at us, radiant as small suns. And in the same moment he began to turn, carefully, meditatively, as much as to say, “You may admire me from all sides, if you please.”

“He thinks he’s as pretty from the back as he is from the front,” the breeder snickered good-naturedly.

But I was nowise tempted to laugh. I was speechless with the thought that God would make something that beautiful, with no other apparent purpose than its beauty.

As soon as the birds were out of their crate, I sat down on it and began to look at them, writes Flannery. I have been looking at them ever since…

You should all know where to find me.