Guarded By Peacocks...

Peacocks always remind me of an old woman that used to live near us when I was growing up. We always thought that the woman was very eccentric to say the least. She lived in what we referred to back then as a mansion. It was ( and still is ) a very large and very ornate home, not really a mansion but a very nice home to say the least. It sits on a couple of acres sectioned off with an iron fence all the way around it. You know the kind - the kind that looks like it's made up of spears.
 The lady that lived there back then had peacocks that roamed the property and whenever one was startled or for whatever reason at whatever hour you would hear that peacock call from blocks away. There were a good amount of trees on the property so that the sound seemed to reverberate before it trailed off and gave it that sort of eerie feeling - especially when young children were out after dark and needing to get home.
 The lady that I speak of, as it turned out, was not necessarily as eccentric a she was more in a state of dementia. She was known to have quite a bit of money to her name but yet she lived mostly in her kitchen so that the oven could be her source of heat. It was cheaper that way. I remember that the house was full of stuff such as newspapers, clothes, boxes and tons of things that I can't clearly remember. We now know that to be what we call hoarding and it's a type of mental illness. She had more cats than what would now be a legal amount. These days the ASPCA would be called in to relieve her of probably, most, if not all of them.
 It's funny how we looked at others problems back then, or should I say, didn't look at them. People were called eccentric, funny, off kilter or just plain old weird but we just left them alone to live out there lives in the manner that they were accustomed to. At least that's how I saw it as a young boy and that's how I remember it now. Maybe there were agencies involved in most cases but I know that there weren't any involved with her. Hell, her own family never came around until after she died and that, of course was only to sell off everything. That's pretty sad... 
 There's no real point to this story, I guess. Only that any time I see or especially hear a peacock I immediately think back to a little old lady that lived in a mansion all by herself with her cats and her stuff and her chair in the kitchen of  her dimly lit home. A home that that was guarded by peacocks. Man, that little old lady sure was eccentric...