I had to get rid of my rooster this weekend. You remember him. Funny-looking bird with feathers growing out of his head. It wasn’t his looks that prompted his ouster. Nor was it his incessant crowing (although that certainly didn’t help his cause). What did him in was his ceaseless desire to abuse the hens. He chased them around the coop and pecked at them all day long. He destroyed their nests. He stressed them out so much they stopped laying eggs. To put it bluntly, he was being a cock.
However, his offensives certainly didn’t warrant the death penalty so I actively searched for a new home for him. I put an ad on craigslist for a FREE ROOSTER and got far more responses than I’d anticipated, roosters generally being about as desirable as head lice. I picked the first person to express a willingness to drive over immediately, an old man named Frank who wanted to give the rooster to his grandson. When he arrived I asked him how he was going to catch the rooster, and Frank nearly laughed in my face. “It won’t be a problem,” he said. “I was raised a country boy.” And with that Frank walked into the coop and grabbed the rooster with both his hands. As the rooster fidgeted and squawked in his arms, Frank continued to talk to me about chickens, children, and World War II.
For a country boy Frank drove a pretty suburban-looking car, which made me wonder how he was going to get the rooster home. Having just witnessed him pick up a rooster as if it were the morning paper, I should never have doubted him. Frank plopped the rooster down on top of a garbage bag and dropped a basket over his head, then taped the bag to the basket, a trick I’m going to have to remember. Frank thanked me, and I thanked him, and just like that the rooster, and all the troubles he brought me, was gone.
