The City Mouse and the Peacock

I’m a city girl. I grew up in an apartment complex. There was even a bus stop outside my kitchen window. Alas, before you get too envious, the bus was the 105, which was kind of lame, not like the 108 which went to the mall and the movies. Anyway as a city girl, my wildlife knowledge was mainly obtained via the Stone Zoo, Sesame Street and the occasional road trip to see family in Ohio.

I went to college in Western Mass., which gave me a little taste of country living. I then lived in Delaware and Maine, and that meant more opportunities for spotting animals other than just squirrels and pigeons. In Maine there were many mornings when our cars would be surrounded by wild turkeys. We’d have to wait for them to go on their way before we could head off to work. Sometimes deer would dart out in front of us in the early mornings and evenings. One day a few of my co-workers were late for work because a moose was standing in the middle of the road and they couldn’t get by him. By the time Mike, Madison and I moved to Connecticut in 2001, I was certainly not a country mouse, but I was used to being up close and personal with the great outdoors.

Don’t misunderstand. Though, not quite a novelty anymore, spotting wildlife was still a thrill. Our new home in Connecticut added a new layer of animal spotting. Our house was a duplex owned by the US Coast Guard. There was a lighthouse on the property and another lighthouse at the end of the beach. Our living room window was actually composed of two huge picture windows that took up the length of the entire room. The windows looked out on the Connecticut River. Take a walk out in the yard and you’re looking at the Long Island Sound. Talk about idyllic. There were winter mornings when I would be looking out at the water and I would see seals floating by on large pieces of ice. On more than one stormy occasion waves would send skates and other marine life soaring over our fence. There were resident swans, rabbits, osprey, hawks, deer, coyote, foxes and more.

The only drawback to our home was that it was a duplex, which meant another Coast Guard family shared our yard with us. We were in the first half of the duplex which also meant that no matter what, once parked, our neighbors had to walk by our windows every day. We lived there for five years and had four sets of neighbors. We liked some more than others. In general though, they were all okay. Our first neighbors were rather aloof. There were two teenage boys who were a cross between punk and Goth. They had several piercings, spiked hair, black painted fingernails; they dressed in black all the time and changed their hair color more often than I changed Madison’s diapers. They were pretty good kids, from what I could tell, but in a town like Old Saybrook, their urban punk look really stood out. Even Mike would occasionally make a crack about their looks. I, the sophisticated and cutting edge city mouse, on the other hand prided myself on not making a big deal about their style. I never could understand why people would stare at teenagers and make them feel uncomfortable just because they were trying to express themselves. Of course, since we never really spoke, they didn’t know this about me, for all they knew I could have been just another disapproving, conservative snob. The family was nice, but things between us were a little awkward. They walked by our windows often, yet I refused to pull the blinds. I didn’t want to ever miss out on the amazing view and the opportunity to spot wildlife. So we developed a sort of unspoken agreement. When they walked by our window they would look straight ahead, trying not to peer into our personal world.

So there I would sit in front of the picture windows rocking baby Madison and enjoying our amazing locale. When we were first living in Connecticut I used to see a group of turkeys in the morning. Not much different than the Maine turkeys, except for the fact that I was the only one who ever saw them. It started to become a little joke between Mike and me. One morning during the mysterious turkey period of my life, I also saw a pheasant in my yard. This time I had a witness. Unfortunately for the poor pheasant, my witness was Rocco, my Boxer. The pheasant was quite a runner, but in the end it was his wings that saved him. Mike missed out on the pheasant spotting and since Rocco refused to corroborate my story, it just became another joke.

I was vacillating between feeling bad for Mike because he was missing out on so many cool animals, and being annoyed with him because he kept teasing me about them. Then one day he called to me from the living room. “Aimee! Aimee! Come quick. There’s a peacock in the yard.” A peacock? How cool! I’d seen so many animals, but never, ever had I seen a peacock out and about. I thought to grab my camera, but I didn’t want to miss seeing this majestic creature strutting through our yard. Instead, I went dashing through the house, sliding on the linoleum floor in my socks. I suppose I would have been quite a sight if let’s say you were walking past our picture window and saw me coming full steam ahead. I was so excited that I ran up to the window and like a child in a candy store, pressed my face against the glass. At that very moment the peacock locked eyes with me.

I can still see it; it was almost like an out of body experience. There I was, with my white and red spit-up covered pjs, mismatched socks, wildly curly hair, my face and hands pressed against the glass, eyes bugging out, searching. I can still see him and his puzzled look. He, the peacock, with his skateboard in one hand, car keys in the other, blue spiked hair fanned out on top of his head, staring back at this unworldly bumpkin who has nothing better to do than hurl herself against the window and pass judgment upon him.