A Bride for Orpheus

It was an arranged marriage, and it was overdue.
Orpheus, our peacock, coming into his testosterone, has been staring hard at chicken hens and fanning out his tail feathers (which are still turkey brown). He begins to rustle and shimmy like a broadway diva.
"Shake, shake, shake, shake your boody." Cate and I chant.
The favored hen is oblivious, continues to peck cracked corn, and Orpheus pivots and goes into a backward moonwalk. Last weekend we watched him going through his routine, Tammy, Meg and I, laughing hysterically.
He needs one of his own kind, said Tammy.
Well, come on then, I said, and we drove out the Pisgah Road to see Danny St. Hilaire.

Danny was looking thinner. He's thirtyish, with a long ponytail and several facial piercings, quiet, congenial, usually high. I told him what I was after; he noticed how pretty Meg is at 16 and commenced to give us the grand tour.

In the barn, a large hen under a heat lamp brooded protectively over 14 mottled chicks. Danny pointed out a banty rooster acting sentry, and warned us to watch our ankles.
The rooster was a handsome fellow, black with gold wings, and looked, as Tammy pointed out, just like a pirate. His ruffled comb set rakishly atop his head, and he was wearing what looked to be black velvet pants.
In the stall stood a long horned heifer and bull. I've got a bull out in the pasture twice the size of him, Danny informed us. We raised our eyebrows. It was a large bull. I couldn't put him on her though; she's not open, she'd never calve it.

Danny slipped through a wired door and into a large cage that held four peacocks. High-pitched squawking, wild wings beating, the air was filled waist high with dust. Danny sneezed and sneezed again. God damn! my allergies, he said.
See this one with the green neck. I could sell you her. These three have been on her a lot. She needs a break.
Thus we bought Ophelia.
I couldn't wait to see Orpheus' reaction, but it was not the romantic reunion of like meets like I had imagined. At first Orpheus totally ignored her and for several days kept parading his stuff for Goldie Hawn, the chicken hen he fancies most.
He and Red, the Rhode Island rooster have had fierce battles over Goldie. I don't know what she's got between those chicken thighs, but she's a man magnet.
Orpheus neglected Ophelia to the point that the other hens were ganging up and pecked the back of her green head bloody. I was pissed off when I saw that, and gave Ophelia her own pen for a few days till her head healed.

Now this morning, as I'm out hanging the wash, I see the Peabodys, on the stroll for breakfast. He's her strutting escort, and she follows five steps behind.