My Wife Talks To Peacocks

My Wife Talks to Peacocks A Compendium of Cristina's Furred & Feathered, Scaled & Leafy Loves

About this book For the past twenty-four years there's been a murmuring and chattering along the banks of the Gitathuru River in Muthaiga. Not only the caterwauling of hadada ibises or the barking of setters or the chipping of Syke's monkeys, but a human voice. La voce melifera, as one friend put it: Cristina talking to those of us who share the plot with her. So here, on the occasion of her 2008 birthday, is a catalogue of the members of Cristina's audience.

We all listen with love for her.

My Wife Talks to Peacocks My wife talks to peacocks: She sits them in a row, And tells them very sternly Where they may and may not go.

But when she’s in the office — Where peacocks seldom roam — they strut around here everywhere: She’s made them quite at home.

My wife talks to poodles: They follow in a line; She firmly warns them never pee On curtains any time.

Yet when the day is over, And they yowl at her return, It seems all rules are broken, And that they’ll never learn.

My wife talks to weaver birds, To fishes and to bats, To squirrels and geese and Labradors, And all the neighbours’ cats.

She talks to plants to make them grow, To the sky to make it rain; She talks to me in all these ways -My lucky life’s refrain.

HC, April 1997

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Early days of cockers and horses. And Juan Martin. 3

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Two decades on the banks of the Gitathuru

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Gizmo, Mota, Mara(s), Nungu-nungu

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Tabu, Nukta, Deni

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Non-poodle is Esprit, Echo's '02

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Neupe's puppies

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Lola

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Snoopy, Tabu (a.k.a. the Pied Drooler), Mafalda, Gizmo, Mota, the two Maras

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Grogan

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Quarry Dogs

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St. Mark's in the morning

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Sykes monkeys

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Sifuri & Bud

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Ruhondeza ("He Who Sleeps A Lot") and the Mubare family, Bwindi

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La Pampa Humida

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My Wife Talks to Peacocks Listen Carefully