I do love peacocks and admire their showy plumage and all of the other attributes that I anthropomorphize to my great delight. Birds, in general, are a subject of my fondness for their wonderful and weird and wildly showy beauties, and peacocks merely one of the more obvious kings of my affections. Another variety of bird of which I’m quite enamored is the chicken, with the many distinctive shapes, colors, and personalities in its species.

Roosters, of course, are often (though not always) the showiest and most individualistic of their kind. Men. Whatever anyone says about women being the self-absorbed sex when it comes to appearances clearly hasn’t looked around at all of the coiffed, tattooed, jeweled, made-up, well-heeled males wandering around humankind throughout history let alone at the range of male beauty in the beastly realms. The other kinds of beasts, I mean.

But enough scorning of sexist talk. I’m here to admire birds, roosters in particular, and Celi’s handsome cockerel specifically. She never fails to show her animal menagerie in a glorious light, even when they’re cutting quite the junior-miscreant capers, and I’m quite certain that it’s her great affection for them that makes them look their best in her every shot. Well, that and a whole barge-full of skill and art on her part. In any event, I have fallen in love with all of the residents of her ‘farmy’ right along with Celi herself, and while I should most like to have paid tribute to her gorgeous rooster in person or at least with an exquisitely embroidered silk panel in the Chinese style to give him his full due, I can’t fly, and my own skills in embroidery are more of the oops-I-stitched-it-to-my-own-leg and what-is-that-weird-spiderweb varieties, so here I made a pretense of embroidering by using my digital stitchery. I do mean well.