Entertainment

Martha Stewart's pet graveyard keeps getting busier

Maeve Connoly

Maeve Connolly

Maeve is the deputy digital editor at The Irish News. She has worked for the company since 2000.

 Martha Stewart's favourite peacock and its five friends were killed by coyotes, a few months after her dogs ate her cat
 Martha Stewart's favourite peacock and its five friends were killed by coyotes, a few months after her dogs ate her cat  Martha Stewart's favourite peacock and its five friends were killed by coyotes, a few months after her dogs ate her cat

Friends, we must turn our gaze once more towards Martha Stewart who is having a shocker of a time on the pet ownership front.

To recap, days after batch cooking a super stew for her four dogs where the recipe called for a poached turkey, venison and nine different vegetables, her dogs ate her cat. 

Martha illustrated her grief with an Instagram post showing three men digging a wheelbarrow size grave for a cat called Princess Peony. It was as bleak as you are imagining.

“Burying the beautiful and unusual Princess Peony,” Martha captioned it.

“The four dogs mistook her for an interloper and killed her defenceless little self. I will miss her very badly. RIP beauty”.

That was April and here we are in August dealing with another death - deaths in fact - but no graves need dug this time because coyotes ate every last bite of her peacocks.  

With a heavy heart, Martha turned to Instagram once more.

“RIP beautiful BlueBoy. The coyotes came in broad daylight and devoured him and five others including the magnificent White Boy. Any solutions for getting rid of six large and aggressive coyotes who have expensive tastes when it comes to poultry?? 

“We are no longer allowing the peafowl out of their yard, we are enclosing the top of their large yard with wire fencing etc.”

Instagram users will know that you can add a soundtrack to your post and Martha’s video of Blue Boy in his prime was accompanied by Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On. Yes, it does jar, but please allow Martha to explain. 

“... and by the way I do not have any idea how the Marvin Gaye music found its way to this sad post but when Blue Boy was alive it would have been perfectly appropriate.”

Devastated as she was by the sudden and savage deaths of Princess Peony, Blue Boy, White Boy and the four unnamed peacocks, Martha did not wallow in grief but bounced back both times.

After Princess Peony was buried, Martha’s next post was from a private jet where she was surrounded by saplings she was flying home to the farm to plant. To think that you will never, ever travel by private plane but eight immature trees already have. 

Soon after the six peacocks were devoured, Martha brought us news that the peaches in her orchard were ripe, but - public service announcement -  “they feel a bit hard to the touch when picked but inside incredibly juicy, fragrant and delicious”. And you can find a recipe for peach cobbler in her book. 

You have to admire the hustle. Princess Peony and the peacocks would want it that way.

Rosé emoji per favore

Rosé wine needs its moment in the spotlight
Rosé wine needs its moment in the spotlight Rosé wine needs its moment in the spotlight

Spare a thought for the winemakers of Italy who continue to be deprived of a smartphone emoji of a glass of rosé. How their WhatsApp groups continue to function is anyone’s guess.

A group of vintners is lobbying for this oversight to be rectified, stating that it is “a legacy of the marginalisation that the world of rosé has suffered for decades”.

Emoji creators, right this wrong, atone for the sins of your forefathers who drew emojis with pen on paper and give the rosé makers of Italy the emoji they deserve.


Social Media Smut

Keke Palmer's advice to young women

The actor Keke Palmer has been chatting to Glamour about love and self-love and had this strong message for young women: 

“In love, the main thing for us young women is that we end up contorting ourselves into a pretzel. I want us to know that—and this is something I tell myself—the only way I’m going to have love and the love that I want is if I love myself first. If the guy isn’t into the things I’m into, or if he wants me to do stuff that I don’t normally do, and I’m going to do it because I want him to like me, then he’s not the one. And maybe he could be the one, but I wouldn’t know because I didn’t tell him no and see how he responded to it. That’s the big thing I’d hope for young women. We often get wrapped up in love, wanting love, and feeling like we need it to be validated by it. And it’s okay to want it, but on top of wanting it, we have to know that we don’t need it.”