Proud as a Pea-Hawk

Last night I had painting class so the kids were in bed asleep by the time I got home. I didn't get my usual day's debrief from L until this morning when she woke at the crack of dawn (when all more sensible family members are still sound asleep), and proceeded to give me the previous day's run down while "helping me" get dressed for work.

It appeared to have been quite an amazing day. Evidently after dinner Mommy loaded her and N into the car and went to Vons to grocery shop. After this they went on a "big adventure" -- they went high up into the mountains where they saw trees and horses and cows. They even saw the ocean from this lofty mountain retreat. But most amazing of all, they saw pea-hawks! And the pea-hawks kept going "Me-ow! Me-ow!" L wasn't scared of them but N was "a little scared."

Now L is only four, and while she's an imaginative little cuss, she's not quite to the stage of making up full blown fantasies, but try as I might I couldn't figure out where the root of truth in her story might be. Stacy finally emerged from her nocturnal stupor right before I had to set out the door, so I related L's strange account to her. She instantly translated.

Yes, after dinner she had taken the kids to Vons, but since it was a nice evening she decided to go on a drive afterward. There was no road trip to the Canadian Rockies, or even the Angeles Crest; it was a simple drive up Hawthorne Blvd. up onto the Palos Verdes Peninsula, which at about 450 meters is our local "mountain". The PV hill is the chock full of trees and horses and at the south side you do get great vistas of the San Pedro channel and Catalina Island. (Stacy wasn't exactly sure where the cows fitted in.) As for "pea-hawks", PV has for years and years been the home of dozens (hundreds?) of wild peacocks that roam the arroyos and washes of the hill. They do make a very feline sounding cry, as well as a rather piercing screech, which makes them somewhat less than beloved by their neighboring Palos Verdians. (I'm sure there's some great, dramatic story to explain the peacock presence there. I've heard some good stories giving the histories of the flocks of parakeets I've seen through out the Redondo Beach area. Talk about a double-take!)

So L's fantasies are based in reality after all.

What she doesn't know (and what I probably won't tell her so she can be surprised) is that the peacocks sometimes venture down from the hill. A couple of years ago we had a couple of interlopers strutting and caterwauling in front of our house, and doing unspeakable things to my car. They are really beautiful to look at, but man, are they ever ugly to listen to and clean up after. I fully understand the PV love/hate relationship with them.