We are saving up to get a fine pair of giraffes.

We need to organize a barn raising event for....The first giraffes in Washago. We'll also need....Some large sweaters and britches. Looking for volunteers to pick up giraffe patties during Canada Day parade.

The Incredible Tale of the Peacock and the Train! Believe it or Not.

A good read.

Last spring we got these two beautiful peacocks.  A real pair of love birds. 

One sunny day the peacocks were stepping around and picking up seeds under the clothesline.  I came out on the porch and started hanging up laundry.  I guess it spooked these two and they flew off into the bush.  The bush around the farm is a dangerous place.  Many a chicken, rabbit or squirrel has lost their life unexpectedly as they doddled around in the trees.  

We searched for the peacocks for a few hours but only the male turned up.  We chased him back to the barn.  We just thought the female,  Penelope, had been snatched up by a fox or raccoon.  Peacocks can fly but they tend to run along on the ground if something is chasing them.  This would have made her an easy dinner for a wild critter.

We’ll skip ahead six months to late October.  We were watching the male Peacock, David, one afternoon.  He seemed lethargic and sedentary.  Every little while he’d peck Merle the turkey on the head or knock a chicken off the roost.  Not a happy guy.

We decided to find him a new mate.

Nelly checked kijiji and the first thing she saw was... Free female peacock available to good home.  Mactier.

Mactier is 96km from our house.  We called and a lady told us that 13 other people had responded to the add.  They all said they were coming to pick up the peacock.  We told her that we’d be there in an hour.  Up the road we went with a cage and some birdseed in the car.

We followed directions she had given us and came to a cottage on the lake just north of Mactier.  A man met us as we got out of the car.  He told us that him and his wife were headed to Florida for the winter and had to get rid of this peacock that had been there all summer.  He said his sons worked for CN Rail and had found the peacock stuck on the front of a train at the rail yard in Mactier.  They had brought it back to the cottage, where it spent the summer.

We put the peacock in the car and took it home.  I took the peacock to the barn.  It hopped out of the cage and up on to the perch where our former peacock sat.  David the male was beside her in a flash.  It was his mate that had vanished six months previously.  They were happy as clams.  Lovebirds I should say.

To summarize... Our bird had gotten spooked and flew across the highway to the train tracks. She was hit by a train and became stuck in the grill at Washago.  The train traveled to Mactier, where it stopped in the yard almost 100kms from Washago.  The boys took the peacock out of the grill and back to the cottage.  This is where we picked it up after finding it instantly on kijiji.

More Tales from The Pipe and Slipper.....