Molly and I went to visit an ironically named peacock this weekend on a charming hobby farm built almost entirely with repurposed materials.
Ducks swim in a pond that once functioned as a satellite dish, while chickens and sheep mill about in tidy structures constructed with discarded material from a torn down Olive Garden.
Overseeing the entire 22-acre property is a regal though currently androgynous peacock named Chicken.
Somehow, Chicken negotiates the perilous social structure of a farmyard with ease. As the only bird on the premises that gets to ride a truck off the property and return with his head and neck still intact, Chicken rules the roost.
Like a pale Little Lord Fauntleroy, Chicken travels around on human shoulders during the day, but he/she flops in the hen-house with the rest of the riff raff and roosters at night. If there’s resentment among the ducks and chickens, we didn’t see it.
Everyone defers to defer to the beautiful peacock, bread from the egg to believe he/she’s special. Peacocks strut naturally like NFL linebackers who have just sacked the quarterback and Chicken has that walk down.
Eventually, as Chicken gets older, we’ll learn whether he will develop the lush plumes of a male peacock, or the less obvious feathers of a peahen.
In the meantime, Chicken believes he/she is the king/queen of the farm and consequently so do we.
