Friday, July 29, 2016

The Blue Chicken

Years ago, we used to board at a place that had a variety of critters running around. One day, a boarder's three year old daughter came running up to her father, yelling "DADDY, DADDY, I SAW A BLUE CHICKEN!!!" Her father said something to her like, "A blue chicken? Now honey, we talked about this..." at which point she grabbed his hand, dragged him around the barn, and started pointing. "See Daddy, there's a WHITE chicken (pointed to a white chicken), a BROWN chicken (pointed to a brown chicken), and a BLUE chicken!" She was pointing at the resident peacock. 

Saturday evening, I went out to feed the horses and found this guy perusing the chicken coop:

Yes, that's exactly what you think it is.

We've had some other weird things show up at our house, including a bull, the neighbor's horse, and countless snakes, but I never thought we'd have a resident peacock. He spent the night in our oak tree, but was hanging out in our neighbor's garage by Sunday morning (I know this because they called me to ask if we'd lost a peacock.)

He dropped back by Sunday afternoon and hung out for a while, and this morning I heard him in the greenbelt. Apparently he doesn't have anyone he "belongs" to, but given he can fly over our neighbor's 8 foot fence, I don't think anyone will be able to "keep" him.


Anybody got a good recipe for blue chickens?

33 comments:

  1. No insights but I don't like peacocks at all. Hopefully you can figure something out :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They aren't my favorite either! Fortunately he doesn't seem inclined to stick around.

      Delete
  2. Hahaha, the blue chicken story. I hate peacocks too, they sound like screaming women!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. They are, although he never displayed for us.

      Delete
  4. I have heard they need to be stewed, as they are very tough. There's a couple of peacocks on my commute that are very close to going in the stewpot, since they blatantly refuse to get out of the way of my vehicle...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That would need to be one REALLY big pot!

      Delete
  5. Ahh peacocks. Cute to look at but ugh their noise is horrible. Funny story!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I imagine whoever feeds it, will get to "keep" it. I think they're so pretty, never heard one though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He doesn't seem to be lured by food at all, but I'm surprised the coyotes haven't gotten him. I guess he's smarter than our chickens?

      Delete
  7. So pretty, but the noise those things make it totally not worth the pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yeah - peacocks and guinea hens - you can keep them and their infernal racket!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha... hopefully he'll stay with the neighbors!

      Delete
  9. Very pretty blue chicken.

    This winter my toddler was standing at the peafowl exhibit at our local zoo. The peacock was displaying his beautiful feathers for all to see when my child began screeching with glee, "Daddy, Look! A squirrel! A squirrel!" Priceless.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Our neighbour has pretty blue chickens that also like to come visit us/hang out on the road now and then. I like them, but I'm sort of used to the noise now.

    ReplyDelete
  11. A once ran into an emu loose at a boarding barn. By the time I found someone else in the barn to show it to it had run away into the woods again. Everyone thought I was crazy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Suuuure you saw an emu. Suuuuure... ;)

      Delete
    2. Actually the same thing almost happened to me- but it was the neighbor's emu and it ran around our farm while I was having a lesson. Luckily there were plenty of witnesses ha!

      Delete
  12. That's hilarious! You might see the odd pheasant around here, but no blue chickens.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pretty sure a pheasant would be eaten by the coyotes. That and we don't have any native ones.

      Delete
  13. Oh man... that's just as good as the pig that wandered onto our property!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can keep your pig and I'll keep the peacock!

      Delete
  14. Replies
    1. My plan is to chase him regularly with a pitchfork and hope he leaves.

      Delete
  15. I don't know what I would do if a blue chicken showed up at my house! Also, it must be something in the weather, another blogger I follow just had a pig show up!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, yeah I know, Andrea's got a pig! Sounds like hers is there to stay though - our blue chicken seems to be a transient.

      Delete
  16. I am actually super curious what peacocks taste like

    ReplyDelete