This story is more about a peahen than it is about a peacock. Well, it’s about a choice she wanted to make.

She was looking for someone to share her life with. Not everyone wants to, and not everyone can, but she could and did and so she was taking a look at all the peacocks around her to see who would make a good life companion. It turned out to be a problem, not because there too few (there were plenty), and not because there were too few nice peacocks (there were plenty of those, too), but, well…

There were too many to choose from. And frankly, they were very much alike. How do you choose when they’re all so similar?

They all had glorious fans of tailfeathers, with the bright emerald eyes glinting in the sunlight whenever they displayed them. They all had a very similar grace in the way they moved about, nearly dancing as they moved the fan left, and right, and forward, and back. They bowed their gleaming azure heads and necks with politeness and respect. They were even able to talk the good talk to her and the other peahens.

Well, all right. They were able to squawk the good squawk. It comes to the same thing.

With so many options, how was she to choose?

As it happened, it was the chickens that helped her decide.

No, they weren’t offering advice. They were sharing their living grounds and feeding area. There were nearly always chickens about.

Most of the peacocks ignored them most of the time. They didn’t say “Hello,” and they didn’t ask about their day. They’d readjust their fans so it faced a peacock, not a chicken.

There were other times when they stopped ignoring them, and it turned out to be a Bad Thing. They’d scream at them to go away, and they’d rush them with their wings batting away, and they’d even start pecking them with their sharp beaks.

One peacock, however, didn’t act that way. When the chickens showed up at break of day, he’d squawk a polite “Good morning.” When other peacocks started chasing chickens about, he’d stand between them and glare until they stopped. When he found a particularly good bunch of seed, he’d call out an invitation to everyone to come and share: peacocks and chickens alike.

That, decided the peahen, is the peacock for me. This is somebody who can care for creatures other than those like himself. If he’s kind to chickens, he’ll be kind to me.

Are you ready for the ending? Are you?

They lived happily ever after.

Photo by Quinn Dombrowski. Used by permission under Creative Commons license.