Junior! To the Rescue
This is Junior. He recently earned his stripes as Rescue Rooster.
Junior and Henny were our chicks from last summer. (Junior is the ungainly one on the left). But he grew up to be beautiful.
Duchess (the gray hen in the middle) insisted on sitting a nestfull of eggs; she hatched and raised these two chicks. Quickly Junior grew into a handsome but trouble-making rooster. His sole purpose was to chase, torment and pick on the hens, and so we did as Felzien tradition calls for...
...we hauled him to the neighbor's!
There is a long back story to this which many of you know. Before Ned and I moved to our newly acquired farmstead many, many years ago, my parents "utilized" our chicken house as a depository for their own rooster problem... i.e.; too many, picking on the hens, noise levels, etc. Thus, when we moved here in June of 1994, we were instant owners of 40, yes, 40 roosters!
We moved Junior to my brother's place (just up the road) to reside in his big yard and to keep the elderly dog, Tabor, and the cats company. And they are quite the big happy family with the rooster co-mingling with Joel and the dog and cats or whoever is in yard. Junior particularly likes Tabor, choosing to stay close to him, share his food and more recently, sleeping in the garage with him. Tabor takes his favorite place on the floor near the door where there are breezes, and Junior chooses something higher to perch on--a saw horse, a shelf, a ladder. It allows him to keep a closer eye on things (and is much more civilized than the barn or a tree).
One recent morning, Junior's prerequisite morning crowing routine took on a particularly incessant and loud quality. It was early... as roosters are want to have all rise early... but he was much more adamant about his announcement this morning--so much so, that he successfully got Joel out of bed, up the stairs and outside at the crack of dawn. Ready to quiet him down, Joel instead finds Tabor-dog high-centered in a trench Joel had dug in the yard the day before; Tabor was okay, but very, very stuck. And next to him was Junior crowing his head off, calling for assistance. Joel pulled Tabor out of his trench, got him back on his feet and saw to it that everything was okay. With this, Junior promptly quit crowing, gave his self-satisfactory "burrrr" sound and walked away.
Job done. Dog rescued. All in a day's work for a rooster.
"Thanks for the rooster," Joel said the other day, "he's good entertainment!"
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 11:30PM
Reader Comments (2)
great story. excuse my ignorance, but what is ' high centered'? i can't quite picture how a dog gets stuck in a trench....
Lex, basically poor Tabor fell into a narrow trench feet first. Her shoulders and hips held her upright at the top of the trench leaving her feet dangling into the trench and without capacity to get out. Remember this is an OLD and slow moving dog!