Fowl play in the henhouse

Run for the roundhouse, Nellie! He can’t corner you there!

If, like Nellie, Pokey-the-peahen had a roundhouse to which she could have run, she might still be strutting her stuff. Instead, she shared a four-cornered pen with seven peacocks. Now, while being the apple of 14 beady little eyes would be considered a WOW! situation by a vibrant young hen, it proved to be too much for the aged Pokey.

According to a breeder of peafowl, the ideal ratio is five peahens to a peacock, so you can understand why Pokey knew the full meaning of the word “overloved”!

Inside the shelter, she stayed on the roost most of the time. Outside, she picked bugs and green shoots while keeping watch of the nearby peacocks who fanned their eye feathers, rustled their support feathers and flopped their flight feathers as they pranced and pivoted to gain her attention. After they had danced themselves into such a frenzy that they became totally enraptured with their performances, Pokey would slip into the brush unnoticed.

As the peacocks began to unwind and discovered her missing, they’d turn to second-best audiences, doing their thing for a disgusted banty rooster, a perplexed pigeon, a dandelion blossom or an unemotional roll of garden hose. About dusk, after the boys had gone to roost, Pokey would slink into the shelter and settle quietly in a shadowy corner of the pen.

As readers of last week’s column recall, Pokey began displaying the plumage of a peacock and poultry experts advised that, because of a hormonal change, she actually was turning into a male. One of the experts even predicted she’d change back to a hen within three months.

We don’t want to set ourselves above the experts, but we question the hormonal thing as the cause of Pokey’s change-of-gender. We believe she decided it would be easier to become a peacock than to fight them off. Unfortunately, her gender glands short-circuited and she kicked the well-known bird bucket.

Today’s offering ends with yet another unusual peahen tale. A few years ago, a peahen laid four eggs for which she showed no maternal attachment. On the other wing, there was a little banty hen in a feverish broody mood. Having no eggs to incubate, she adopted those laid by the peahen. Suddenly the peahen was also hit by an acute attack of the broodies. She hopped into the box to claim her unhatched kids. The banty reacted violently and drove the peahen from the nest.

Next morning, the peahen was setting on the eggs and the banty was nowhere to be found. After searching for three days, we gave up — believing the peahen had pecked her badly and she’d crawled off to bleed and die. But, one sweltering hot day, we saw the banty’s panting head sticking up out of the peahen’s breast feathers. She was still incubating the eggs and the peahen was incubating the whole kabanty and kaboodle for more than three weeks!

Only two eggs hatched. Because the banty had endured so much, we gave her one of the chicks. It was the beginning of a hilarious parade of events … starting with the day the tiny chick first fanned his tail feathers. The proud banty rooster went into shock when he realized his son had been fathered by a bird of another color!

Jerry Elwell is a free-lance nature writer who lives in Sherman Station.