At her Georgia farm, the celebrated Catholic writer raised an unruly flock whose beauty and noise became part of her imaginative world.
“I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply,” said Flannery O’Connor, “for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.”
If Flannery O’Connor were living in New York City today — and if she were to make such a statement about, say, cats — I imagine that the ASPCA would be called, the felines would be hastily relocated, and she’d have a social worker assigned to her case at the earliest possible moment.
But she’s talking, instead, about her beloved peacocks, a familiar sight at Andalusia, her ancestral farm in Milledgeville, Georgia.
I’ve had a sort of peripheral knowledge of O’Connor’s peacocks. I owned a treasured book of her short stories, adorned with a feather. I’ve seen photos of the popular Catholic storyteller sitting casually on her front porch, with peacocks strutting past. But finally, in a book of essays I ordered for inspiration, I stumbled upon her essay “The King of the Birds,” in which she describes the feathered friends that shared her homestead. Last year, it was my
