NaBloPoMo - Day 19 - Another Day, Another Peacock

From this:

To this:

This is Petey... he is a peacock...

He is the one egg that was laid this year out of about a dozen that actually hatched.

They talk about how hard it is to raise peacocks, but he made it...

He's now definitely a young male peacock...

For a while there, we thought Petey might be a girl,

but within the last couple of weeks, his neck feathers brightened up

and he started tail flapping which will help get those muscles ready

when he is full grown and has his train...

I'm hoping I'll get to see it in three years when he fully matures...

kinda like I waited for Prince's train to come in...

If you remember, I wrote about back in April.

Unfortunately, about 3 weeks ago, he didn't show up in the barn

and a couple of days later I found a clump of white feathers.

Another loss to the bobcat...

I was to the point of crying over this loss...

To raise a pet patiently waiting for that final display 

and then losing it so suddenly was too much to handle.

Not to mention that my mother hand-raised him

it really hit me hard.

Now we're doing everything we can to protect Petey...

But, if there's one thing I've learned being on this property,

you can do everything right and all it takes is a single

moment for everything to suddenly go wrong...

Here's to hoping...