Four Wet Birds and a Virtual Zookeeper

The Part Where I Should Introduce Redd

The peacocks were not done with their surprises last week.

They gave me less than twenty-four hours.

Before we get to the rain, I need to tell you about Redd.

Redd has been my partner in crime for the last few months when it comes to the peacocks. He lives on the East Coast, which has not stopped him from being deeply involved in everything happening with them. When I was building the breezeway, we used video calls to work through the tricky spots — him having considerably more construction experience than me, walking me through problems from several states away.

He has also been watching the birds through the new cameras.

Remotely.

Voluntarily.

This is the kind of friend Redd is.

He was, in fact, checking in on them before bed when he realized something had gone very wrong.

At 11pm, he called me.

“The birds did a dumb.”

Ok whats new…

The Part Where the Camera Caused This

Here is what happened, pieced together from footage and common sense.

The new camera in the pen has a motion sensor. It also has a motion-activated spotlight.

The birds were active near the pen at dusk. The light kicked on. They found this delightful. So they stayed. And then it got darker, and the light was still on, and they stayed some more. And then it got fully dark, and the light was the last source of anything resembling daylight, so they planted themselves next to it like it was a campfire and they were not going anywhere.

Then the storm hit.

And they stood there.

In the rain.

In the dark.

Next to a spotlight.

Because that was the light, and the light was where they were, and that was that. Redd turned off the spotlight.

That much was clear.

The Part With the Flying Rat

I grabbed my flashlight and headed out to the greenhouse to start the retrieval operation.

I opened the door flipped on the light and something launched itself off the wall right next to my face — fast, and gone into the night before I could process what had happened.

I stood there for a second.

A rat. Scared out of its hiding spot by a woman with a flashlight at 11pm in the rain.

We were equally startled. I screamed. The rat probably screamed. (Well if there was ever a time a rat would scream)

Only one of us had to deal with it on top of everything else.

I filed “rat in the greenhouse” under problems to solve tomorrow and kept moving.

The Part Where I Did Not Help

I headed out to the pen in my pajamas, in the pouring rain, flashlight in hand, with a plan.

The plan was to be a moving light source. Lead them to the breezeway. Guide them back to the greenhouse. Simple. Elegant. Dry, in theory.

Twenty minutes later, I had four wet peacocks who were absolutely not following a light anywhere and a dead flashlight.

They looked at the flashlight. They looked at me. They looked at the rain.

They stayed where they were.

They were not moving.

Eventually, I made a decision.

They were birds. They had feathers. They were made to get wet. I was not. I was going back inside.

The Part Where Leaving Was the Right Answer

I got inside. Dried off. Accepted defeat.

Then my phone buzzed.

Redd: Han just went into the greenhouse.

I stared at the screen.

Me: What????

Then Leia. Then the younger ones. One by one, all four birds walked themselves back up through the breezeway and into the greenhouse like they’d been planning to do it all along and just needed me to get out of the way first.

And that’s when James’ words came back to me.

Your birds are stupid and I think you distract them.

I have been told this.

I have now been told this twice. Sometimes I need to step out of the way.

Four wet birds made it back to their roosts.

I turned off their lights.

Me and my virtual zookeeper went to bed.

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