\u00a0 My husband and I have lived in this house overlooking a visually dramatic valley in North\/Central Austin for nearly 16 years.\u00a0 But, before things became quite so static and smoggy, back through those years when the vision out the deck doors showed no buildings at all-and the sky was clear and a bright, light-cobalt-blue; \u00a0we were visited\u00a0by one\u00a0of the strangest \u00a0of all creatures, a peacock.\u00a0 She was lovely, obviously lonely and made such a weird sound, as to catch the attention of anyone or thing near here. At first, upon her sight, I imagined perhaps she was a wild turkey–well another one, anyway; as I had seen those in back of our yard coming in and out of that forest of cedar trees.\u00a0 However, that call, her\u00a0constant cry, was so unusual as to stop me in my tracks (back then, when I had tracks,\u00a0I had both real hips and both real knees, and was able to make tracks without fear of falling, unlike today.) And our yard has a dynamic slope, so she had to fly toward me.\u00a0 Walking was much too undignified for her species unescourted.\u00a0 \u00a0And fly she did; first to where\u00a0I offered her some bread and the outside cat’s water bowl.\u00a0 Both of which she partook, in suspicion, for nearly 5 minutes, as I sat on one of\u00a0the steps down that slope in amazement and dumbfounded awe.\u00a0 She did not seem to mind my company, which seemed wrong, if she was a wild creature\u00a0(however, even today,\u00a0few do mind my company if they are wild…I guess that’s why we have a limited group of visitors, these days,or something of that nature.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 At that time, in early summer, my daughter was in middle school and still interested in visiting ‘wonders of nature’, when announced\u00a0by\u00a0her much revered mother,(ha ha…)\u00a0and was still able to comply\u00a0with\u00a0her “Mom”, when she came inside proclaiming loudly; “Liz, you will not believe this!\u00a0 But, there’s a Peacock <\/span>outside,\u00a0right now,\u00a0in our back yard. Come Look.”\u00a0 In those days she still had\u00a0a tendency to follow a direct order, and also the curiosity of an intelligent child, something that only having children in residence allows us grown-ups to share.\u00a0 So we both hurried out the main outside doors\u00a0of the downstairs level of our home, which\u00a0had only one flight of stairs to the patio and the Peacock.\u00a0 She was still there, looking really puzzled.\u00a0 We both said “wow..” at the same time (Poor child’s mother was an old hippy, even back then.)\u00a0 The Peacock was unimpressed with our conversation skills, so off she flew to the roof of one of the houses (there were much fewer then, and far between) perched on the street going perpendicular from our hill’s view.\u00a0 But the peacock still cried, and called her alarming reframe, as did\u00a0Liz and I.\u00a0\u00a0 “Wow” seems pretty thorough, upon reflection of that summer morning.\u00a0 We sat on the stairway and watched her fly from one roof to the other, until our attention span dwindled to some less exotic subject, who knows what it was?\u00a0\u00a0But after a good 20 solid minutes of Peacock watching, we went back-inside.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I was inclined to do in those days, I thought\u00a0 (over the presence of that particular \u00a0Peacock) for quite some time,\u00a0wondering if she was really native to this area, or someone’s missing\u00a0bird from a flock near here,\u00a0that’s a\u00a0genuine possibility.\u00a0 We used to go to a lovely restaurant in the center of Austin, where\u00a0 there were many peacocks, and peachicks, if that’s a word, roaming the grounds…well,that was an\u00a0actual flock of peacocks; and besides the old fashioned, deep south, ambiance of that establishment, the peacocks were the main attraction back then. \u00a0And so, armed with the yellow pages and about 1\/8th the population of Austin today, I made several calls to the Humane Society; Parks and Wildlife division of the City Government (I had a friend working there, way back then), and the County Agricultural agent, and on and on,\u00a0until some kind soul says to me,” It’s impossible to know if “your(?)” Peacock is wild or not, although it is<\/em> odd that she is alone.\u00a0 So go bother someone else, etc…”\u00a0 Good advice, that.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway, “our” peacock came to our back yard several times during the next couple of days and then disappeared like the water in the cat dish.\u00a0 I still remember that unusual call, and the amazement of sitting right beside her as she\u00a0ate and drank water.\u00a0 Then, there is that factor- that next door to our house were three wild and empty Lots where in\u00a0several gray fox had a den…\u00a0 hnmmmm. Oh, well, I like to just think she found her way home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 Here is the view from a web-cam looking out side our house in the direction from which the peacock came.\u00a0 Only ‘difference is this is happening right now, or with in a stream during\u00a0these moments, and times, today.\u00a0 Try and imagine what this would be like with most of these buildings gone:When we moved in our house there were hardly any buildings except the first few houses to the right of the view; click your refresh button (F5)\u00a0to get the view of\u00a0how it is right now<\/em>, today; as\u00a0It is best to stay in the present, even without peacocks.<\/p>\n The Mystical Mystery of our Peacock & Where did it go? Click on song of the day: Morning Dove\u00a0lyrics are here \u00a0 My husband and I have lived in this house overlooking a visually dramatic valley in North\/Central Austin for nearly 16 years.\u00a0 But, before things became quite so static and smoggy, back through those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-true-and-unusual-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgn.kaybuena.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/technologists.com\/sauer\/cams\/back\/cam.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"