INTRODUCING PENNY

     We have found ourselves in The Cottage.  That’s what the little sign on the gate says.  It is… pink.   It stands halfway up a hillside looking down over a swooping field.  Behind us, at the top of the hill, is a church, our nearest neighbour.  The church was built before Columbus discovered America.  The giant spreading yew tree that shelters the oldest tomb stones is seventeen hundred years old.  On another side of the property is a hike that leads up an enormous hill with a panoramic view of the surrounding area. 

     In the morning, should we want eggs, we stroll down the hill to a farmer’s house.  Outside is a little stand with stacks of cartons, each holding six freshly laid eggs.  Pop one pound twenty in the ceramic bowl and take a carton.  The hens that laid them run around the farmyard nearby.   This might sound perfect, but sadly, even here in this bucolic paradise, we face delinquency.  We have found ourselves the unlikely victims of a stalker. 

     When we arrived we were introduced to the other resident of The Cottage, a peacock; to be specific, a peahen.  She stands about three feet tall, and has iridescent turquoise feathers circling her neck.  Each night as dusk approaches she walks up the hillside behind the house and launches herself into a tree.  Peafowl sleep in trees (who knew?) to avoid predators.  Penny, that’s her name, is not exactly svelte, so each launch requires time and thought and calculation and a lot of pacing in circles.  We watch her do this every night out the kitchen window.   It’s a half-hour dance before lift-off.

 

      England happens to be suffering through the coldest March in fifty years.  It is freezing.  We feel for our peafowl, and so, because she is an outdoor peafowl, we’ve been feeding her to help her fatten up and stave off the frigid winds that howl through the churchyard above us and whistle through the trees into the field below us.  Penny’s become quite used to this; so used to it in fact, that she now expects to be fed… demands to be fed, all the time.

  

                                

     Penny lies outside the French doors and watches us in the living room, her little pea-head swivels with our every movement.  She scrutinizes all that we do, with an air of expectation.  When Penny senses motion in the house, she circles the perimeter.  We open the back door; there she is waiting, watching.  We cook in the kitchen, her head pops up outside, framed by the window, staring into the warmth, as if to say, ‘how can you possibly enjoy yourselves smug in your cozy kitchen while I freeze off my tail feathers out here?’  She follows us like a dog across the lawn.  Penny is everywhere.  We have become prisoners in The Cottage.  Only here to do Penny’s bidding.