My husband Mark and I bought a new camper recently, which required a larger truck to pull it.

There was nothing wrong with our old camper, except we couldn’t tuck in the sheets because Mark’s big feet hung off the bed. There was no room to curl his legs up, as my Lola-Pie (the Vicious Maltese Beast) and I require plenty of space for our beauty rest.

He considered solutions like putting a larger mattress on the bed, but the bedroom was so small that we would’ve had to fling our bodies through the air to get into bed each night. Neither one of us is acrobatic. And Lola does not jump; the Queen is lifted onto her hallowed spot on the bed promptly at 10 PM.

During a glamping trip to an RV resort, we fell prey to “Camper Envy,” a common malady that comes from walking around admiring what the Joneses have, which is always bigger and oh-so-much better than ours.

Camper Envy is very expensive. Very. There is a good reason the tenth commandment says “Thou Shalt NOT Covet.” The flesh is weak. Very weak.

I blame Mark, as I was perfectly happy with our old camper. My feet fit just fine in our teensy bed. I love camping as long as I have air conditioning, and I had not experienced the lure of fancy camping. Happy and content. No need for bigger and better.

But…at our camping resort, as I walked Lola Pie in her stroller (don’t judge), I spotted the Ritz-Carlton of campers—a shiny new Brinkley. The owners graciously invited us to tour their camper, but in hindsight, I suspect they were Brinkley sales folk, planted in our view like spiders waiting for a fly, rubbing their hands together in glee.

After our tour (or demonic sales pitch) of the aforementioned five-star, fancy hotel room on wheels, I frantically started searching online ‘just to look’.

Oh, what a painful sticker price, but Come Get Mah Mo-nay!! Them kids don’t need no inheritance! Mine! Mine! Mine! Cackle, cackle!

But what to tow her with? Mark was in charge of finding a more powerful truck. He chose a gigantic, growling diesel truck, shiny, shimmery black with mirror-like chrome bumpers. It was (and is) a beast, albeit a handsome one.

So, a mere week after our Camper Envy trip, we brought home our new (ridiculously expensive) truck and new (also ridiculously expensive) camper.

I can’t even drive the truck because I can’t see over the hood. But Mark is perfectly okay with being the only driver because he is in love with that dang truck.

He fusses over it, buying it toys like airbags for the wheels, sway-reduction thingies, and a shiny hitch so fancy it locks to prevent theft. He parks it far from lower-caste cars and smaller, less manly trucks to ward off scratches and dings from jealous folk. He washes it gently (and often) with soft microfiber towels and lovingly coats the tires with some semi-oily stuff. He hides his stash of truck cloths because I am not allowed to use any for other purposes.

That truck is his girlfriend. I’m just the wifey. Chief cook and bottlewasher. Mostly bottlewasher and critter wrangler, as he does most of the cooking. I am allowed to ride in the truck…sometimes. And I get to wash the microfiber towels. Sigh.

But I’m okay being a Sister Wife to his truck if he doesn’t mind the Brinkley camper being my She-Shed. A gorgeous She-Shed, I must say.

A couple of weeks later, we noticed a little girl and her father standing in our front yard. They were staring toward our driveway, and the girl was jumping up and down, pointing at something.

Mark went outside, and she pointed again, saying:

“There’s a peacock on your truck!”

“Whaaa?” 

“And one on the ground!” 

The peacocks (technically peahens, no tails) apparently saw their reflections in the shiny chrome and decided to look for love (or a fight) in all the wrong places.

Mark rushed over just in time to see a peacock sliding off the truck, clawing the paint.

“NO! NO! NOOOO! Get out of here!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Shoo! Shoo!”

“Dang birds!!”

The peacocks stood by the truck, looking up at Mark innocently. In unison, they tilted their tiny, crowned heads as if to say, “Not our fault your hood is slippery!”

“Yeah! And your bumper is a mirror!”

Shaking their heads at the audacity of common folk, they turned away, bobbing their heads as they walked slowly down the driveway and up the street, completely unconcerned.

Days later, Mark was still plotting revenge. He took photos, googled how to buff out scratches, and researched whether strangling a peacock was legal in Georgia. He was pushed to the edge.

In his defense, every day he has to continually repair a 45-year-old house, maintain various vehicles, trip over three dogs and two cats, and learn patience with a wifey who loves Honey-Do lists. The threat of peacocks attacking his shiny new girlfriend, the love of his life…his truck…was too much.

We sought answers.

Not a single person in our neighborhood responded to our Facebook posts asking who owned two rogue peacocks. We were convinced our neighbors were all in cahoots, maliciously lying about their backyard peacock sanctuaries.

But since that day, we have found several people in surrounding neighborhoods who have either seen or heard wild peacocks.

A quick online search on Google found that wild peacocks exist in several cities in Georgia, including Macon, likely from illegal pets that decided to roam. Like the alligator and armadillo migration some 30 years ago, we are in the midst of a peacock invasion.

And it’s not just Georgia. In Texas, there is a Facebook page called Fred the Peacock, about a peacock who chose a lady’s home as his own. He perched in her trees, pecked at the windows on her porch, strutted through the neighborhood daily, and passed away in 2015.

Today, Fred has 18,000 followers.

But in Macon, I believe I found the source of our local peacocks. When I was a teenager, a man near our current neighborhood kept peacocks down the street from my high school. I was late to class one day because one of his peacocks was blocking the road. It slowly walked down the center line, spread its large tail feathers, turned its whole body slowly in circles, and finally strutted off the road, proud as a…

Imagine the eye-rolling when I used that as an excuse for being tardy.

I am told if peacocks live nearby, they sound like a woman screaming. I haven’t heard them, but the woman-screaming part could be me anytime I see a crawling bug. Or a flying bug. Or a dead bug. Or when my husband enters a room, his gigantic feet oddly quiet, like a deer. No, I am not a peacock. And yes, Mark, I do have my hearing aids in! Smart aleck!

Our peacocks haven’t visited us again. But Mark is still looking. Like a spider waiting for an annoying fly, he waits. I remind him that the Bible says, “there will be trouble in this world,” “rain falls on the just and unjust,” and that the peacocks are just doing what nature tells them to do. It’s not their fault. Etc. Etc. Calm yourself… Look at me! I’m calm!

Until they mess with my fancy She-Shed.

Then it is ON like Donkey Kong!