THAT’S GOING TO BE ONE EXPENSIVE PEACOCK!!!

OR When Will They Learn to Listen?
August 29, 2009

Ds, Sean, has his heart in the right place. I lost one of the remaining two peacocks this week. Without placing Precious and Piper next to each other we can’t tell which one it was. Piper was the bigger of the two hens. We aren’t sure what happened to the hen, Gary just found her dead.

So we’ve been calling the remaining one Pretty Purple Precious Piper Peacock. Sean knows how bad his mama wants a large flock of peacocks of all colors strutting all over the place. He announced he thinks we need to get Precious Piper a male so she will hang around.

In order to do that we need to repair the small pen and remove a large tree that died this year that hangs directly over the little coop there. So the male could be quarantined and acclimated to the place when it first arrives.

Sean wanted him and his father to remove that tree before we left again. The excuse was so it wouldn’t wipe out the coop this winter when it fell on its own. It’s a hollow oak tree, so a good ice storm would take it down. They are predicting a wet winter you know.

He confessed to me this evening that it was so he could start on the repairs and find a male for Precious Piper while we were gone on this next round of travels and surprise me.

Since my shops for today were local and I knew the locations well I told Gary I would go alone if he wanted to stay home and help Sean with outdoor chores. He thought it a great idea.

Some of you know me, so you know I have a little “gift”, it’s nothing I can control, but sometimes it is a very handy thing to have. You see I sometimes “know” when things are going to happen. Generally if I warn someone and they pay attention we get some indication of what we avoided. If they don’t, well they wish they had. It’s not and an all the time thing, or I’d win the lottery immediately—wait you have to buy a ticket for it first right? It’s something that just pops up when I least expect it.

Today was one of those days. I was headed for my first stop—to pick up scratch for the flock—before doing my shop. When I stopped and called home, I had an “uneasy” feeling. Gary told me they hadn’t started work yet but they had decided to remove that big tree. Boom! There it was.

Without even stopping to think I said “Both of you wear hard hats today.” He said he wasn’t sure if Sean had brought his home when he left his previous job. I said I didn’t want them out there without hard hats today. He said Okay, they’d find them.

I know they should always wear hard hats and safety goggles when cutting down limbs and trees, but they don’t. They wear the goggles and hearing protectors, but not the hard hats. So Gary KNEW I was serious when I said to wear them.

From the feed store I went to my first shop and completed it, then on to the second. As I left the second I had a very strong NEED to go home, but finances convinced me I need to do the final shop and the errand on in Tulsa. So instead of back tracking home for lunch I went and got a cheap quick meal at KFC and then headed for the final shop in Sand Springs, OK.

When I arrived at the location I automatically reached for my cell phone to turn off the ringer as I always do at shops. Only that “feeling” was still nagging at me so I left it on as I went in to do the merchandising assignment. If it had been a mystery shop I would have turned it off despite the nagging feeling of a problem, but I left it on for this assignment.

I was half way through the shop when the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Sean, so I picked up while silently praying they wanted fast food and not what I KNEW was coming.

“Hey Mom, where you at?” he asked.

“Just finishing up that merchandising shop in Sand Springs. What happened?”

“How do you do that?” he replied.

“Never mind, whose bleeding?”

“It’s stopped now, but dad sort of dropped a pretty good sized tree limb on his head. He says he’s fine, but I think it needs stitches, I’m taking him to ER. He passed out on me once already.”

“I’ll meet you there. “

“Dad says he’s fine and for you to finish the job, he just didn’t want you to come home and find the bloody towel and… we’re in trouble aren’t we?”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

I finished up all the required steps of the merchandising shop in record time. The manager co-operated quickly and signed my paperwork so I could get to the hospital.

I drove as quickly and safely as I could legally do through the construction areas on the expressway toward the hospital while watching the gathering storm clouds. Praying that Gary was okay and that it wouldn’t rain before we got the feed home and out of the back of the truck. 30 bags of scratch ruined would not be a good thing.

The guys beat me there by less than 15 minutes.

They were just coming out of the check in part when I arrived. The left side of my husband’s beautiful silver hair and face were matted and streaked with blood. He was slurring his speech a little bit. I was too worried to be pissed at that point .

Sean told me Gary had passed out on him a second time on the way into town. Something you should know about my big gentle husband. He doesn’t do blood well, especially his own. He was passing out due to the blood, not the injury. The slurring speech and some vision troubles he was having worried me. The passing out did not.

After a while Gary was called back to see the doctor and a CT scan was ordered. I’ve been in far too many hospital emergency rooms I knew how long it was going to take. So while Gary was off getting his picture taken I went out and sent Sean and the feed home. Telling him to cover it for the night and I’d help him unload it in the daylight.

Once back in the room Gary kept drifting off to sleep and I kept waking him up. As time went on his speech improved and he told me he had seen red sparkles when the limb hit him, but they were gone now and he was seeing fine. It was a four inch in diameter limb and it fell from about 25 feet up. He’d seen it coming, but couldn’t move fast enough.

That is when I asked the golden question “Where was your hard hat?” He said he “forgot”. He got THE look, and he looked sheepish. “I thought you were being over protective.” More of THE look, “I’m in deep dog doo-doo aren’t I?” he whispered.

“Up to your hip joints Bud.” I told him. That’s all I said.

“After 36 years I should know to listen right.” He said softly. I gave no response.

After a long wait a very pregnant doctor came in to say she didn’t see a concussion on the scan, but a radiologist needed to look at it. She checked the wound and said it was maybe a one staple number, but it was already sealing up nicely so unless Gary really wanted it she wouldn’t disturb the healing that had already started. Gary said no staples.

During the discussion with her she asked him what happened. Being the joker he is he told her I hit him with a baseball bat!!! I jumped in on that one and told him I hadn’t but if he didn’t wear his hard hat in the future when I told him to I would. The doctor burst out laughing, then said “So she TOLD you to wear a hard hat and you didn’t?”

He nodded sheepishly.

She looked at me and said “Men, they never listen!” and then rubbed her 9 month belly. We both laughed.

Three hours later I was feeding my husband a cheap burger and he apologized for not listening. Sean and I have already told him he’s on litter box duty for the next 10 changes we are home for—that’s 4 boxes per time. Bet he remembers the next time I tell him to put on a hard hat.

So the freebie repair to get a cheap peacock, has now turned into an emergency room co-pay and over half the tree still needs to come down. Only Gary can’t work on it until 48 hours has passed. We are suppose to leave Wednesday. So the tree may not get finished in time.

Yep, that’s going to be one expensive peacock, Precious Piper better fall in love at first sight instead of snubbing him like she has the last two fellows.

Jan who asks the question “why didn’t he just listen?” in OK