Sunday, February 12, 2017

Torn between two roosters.

I live in Littleton, outside of what's been described as one of the most liberal cities in Texas. We're solid blue here, though we still tend to elect some Republicans to county positions.

As a result, Littleton recently approved the keeping of domestic poultry (ie, chickens) for the purposes of egg-laying or as household pets, not to exceed ten in number, within appropriate confines, in the city limits. Roosters are excepted from this rule.

So of course I live between two.

Neither of them is close enough to the MLD to be a nuisance. I estimate they're each at least four blocks from me, one to the east and one to the south.

Roosters crow because they want to mark their territory. They're birds, after all, and that's what birds do. They crow at sunrise simply because that's when birds start to sing. But if you have *two* roosters within earshot of one another, and one starts to make a noise, the other will begin to crow because, well, there's some Communist rooster creeping up, waiting to destroy the second rooster's way of life and everything he holds dear.

So of course they crow all day. And all night.

Not close enough to be a nuisance--it's actually kind of nice, the roostery noises coming faintly through the open windows--but close enough to hear.

One sounds like a rooster. He goes "cock-a-doodle-do" as he should. He's got a robust voice. I imagine he looks like this:


See? Nice rooster. Very roostery.

The other rooster. . . .sounded a little anemic, by which I mean on the verge of death, for weeks. I assume he was a teenaged rooster? His voice kept cracking and he couldn't quiiiite get the cock-a-doodle bit down. I worried about him for a while, thinking that there was something terribly wrong, that there would be a bevy of bereft domestic poultry (ie, chickens) when he finally passed to the Great Roasting Pan in the Sky.

I was wrong. He was simply practicing.

Now he sounds like the opening vocals in Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." (You know the part: Aaah-aaaah-AAAAAH!) I imagine he might look like this:


Still a nice rooster, but more Bowie than barnyard.

Now I have amusing fantasies of a Rooster Sing-Off: the Perry Como rooster to the east, the Heavy-Metal Rooster to the south. It's "American Rooster Idol" up in here every day.

I also have "Immigrant Song" going through my head on repeat, starting over at the beginning every time I hear Heavy-Metal Rooster rise up singing.

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