Die verlorene Wellgunde

 

Once upon a time ... some quite-a-few years ago ... an uninvited guest knocked on my door ..

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2010/01/peacocks-on-my-patio.html

He was novel, he was cute, he was friendly 

We fed him. We didn't want him to go away. But he did. Mating season, he went in search of sex. But a few months later he came back!

How to keep him here? Answer: import him a harem. We did. Three hens from Little River.

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2011/08/to-catch-peacock.html

Wrong. 

Within a few years we were overflowing with peafowl. They don't know what Oedipal and Incestual and Miscegenation mean.

See previous blogs for pictures of cute chicks, and teeming fowl  .. I think that, after a few years, there were up to 40 or 50 of the big birds on our wee farm. Squawking and Fighting and omigod SHITTING everywhere.

It's a long tale, but, bit by bit, we divested ourselves of the peastock.  The fighting cocks and the squabbling sorority 

Nigel, the peacock catcher, rugby tackled the noisest cocks and carried them off to eager places where peacocks were a novelty  

To cut a long story slightly shorter, a few years back, after much avian exporting, we ended up with, only, for 'housepets', the paterfamilias, one son (Alberich), and three girls of known lineage (Wellgunde, Woglinde, Flosshilde) if not of precise parenthood. 

Still too much. So Alberich and Flosshilde were sent off to someone in the North Island and we, finally, got the Gerolsteiner stock back to manageable proportions.  Mr P (less rampant than before) was satisfied with a harem of two, and we have all lived happily together .. except when they dig up my plants! .. until ...

Today.

Peafowl are supposed to live forty years or so. So we thought that this agreeable threesome was our ornithological family for life. But we noticed, a few weeks ago, that Wellgunde was looking strange. Droopy wings. Last night she was not in her tree. Mr P and Woglinde seem to know ..

Ach, have we lost a Gerolsteinermädchen ...

If so, will Mr P be content with just one wife ... is he too habituated to Gerolstein and his nightly tucker ... or will he leave us? He wouldn't surely after all these years

Wellgunde, come back .. but I fear she has gone to the great chookyard in the sky ...

Next day: Weia! Weia! Wellgunde ....

Lovely day here. Gardening day. And, while weeding behind the roses. Wendy spotted feathers. Wendy can cope with anything, except spiders and dead birds. Fortunately, I have no qualms with any of that. And yes, it was the mortal remains of our Wellgunde. She just looked as if she were asleep. Beautiful as ever.

Wendy dug a hole (I can't) by the riverbank. I placed her in it, self-consciously warbled a snatch of 'Wotan's Farewell', and threw some earth over her.

Woglinde watched at a distance. Seligkeit. 

All alone, I'm just all alone

Message from Woglinde. Formal dissolution of the Gerolstein ladies' Harmonic Society. I can't do it alone! 

PS two days later. Woglinde has used her free, choir practice time, to dig up the new tomato plants. Sympathy is waning, lady ...