Housed with the Cheney Collection in Special Collections at the Vanderbilt University Library are a number of manuscripts written by friends and colleagues of the Cheneys. Here is presented a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s essay “The King of the Birds,” published in 1961. O’Connor spent her life raising peacocks on Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. This essay pays tribute to the regal and, at times, difficult birds.