A Fowl Deed

The LA Times published this story way back in 1980.  Might be the only rooster obituary they ever ran. 

 

 

 

A Fowl Deed

By Charles Kraus

 

     It was one of life’s tragic moments – Brewster being lowered into the ground, my young daughter clinging to my pants leg, sobbing goodbye to her dear, dear friend.  And in the distance, the phantom cheers of local residents, delighted by the prospect of peaceful dawns, uninterrupted by the bugling of the departed rooster.

     Brewster was gone, and except for my wife and 4-year-old Rebecca, who worried that Farmer-God might not feed him well enough in rooster heaven, people seemed downright pleased by his departure.

     I am, by nature, not a rooster booster.  Back in New York City, mama tried to raise me proper, and the only barnyard creatures we got to see were of the plucked variety, hanging grotesquely by their naked kosher necks.

     Even in Oregon, where my wife and daughter and I had recently spent 18 months waiting for the sun to come out, roosters stayed clear of my path.  There were cow-Oregonians, sheep-Oregonians, pig-Oregonians. In  Eugene, one of our country’s old-age homes for surviving hippies, we actually met a guy with a pet gefilte fish.  Yet, I encountered not a rooster.

     The world is an odd oval, and evidently it was written somewhere that my footsteps would cross rooster droppings.  This came to pass upon our return to Los Angeles.

     If the census taker had a question on his page that read, “What do you think of when you hear the name Los Angeles?” you could bet your two-bedroom, $400,000 shanty that not a single individual would respond: “Roosters.”  But it was not in the wilds of the Northwest that Brewster entered my life.  It was a few blocks south of Los Feliz Boulevard.

     We had just moved into our house, the truck had gone off taking the cord to our television, and we’d settled in for a good night’s rest.  Brewster let us sleep until about 6 a.m.  That was the hour he had selected for a few pre-dawn vocal warm-ups.

     Having not been schooled in the art of adapting rooster calls to the written page, I will merely say that the rooster’s pitch was somewhere below that of a tone-deaf bull elephant, and that his repertoire resembled a whirling garbage disposal filled with tin cans.

     “When I took this place,” I explained to my wife, “they didn’t tell me it came with a warm-blooded alarm cock.”

     “That’s OK, dear,” she replied.  “Where did you say we packed the ax?”

     I wasn’t about to resort to butchery, and so turned to sticks and stones.  Not that they helped much.  This was no stewing hen, but what I later learned to identify as a bantam.  A bantam is a rooster that can fly!  Fly into the trees, fly into the hills and fly into your early morning sleep.

     Rebecca took an immediate fancy to the barnyard character.  She’s the one who named him.  And rumor has it that when I wasn’t looking, she even brought him his dinner.

     As the days passed, I formed a kind of adversary’s admiration for our feathered siren.  He was clever and quite handsome.  He marched about our back yard and the slopping hill beyond it with a demeanor so assured and commanding that our three cats and Gabby, our dog, refused to question his credentials.

     Thought Rebecca enjoyed telling her new chums that Brewster was our personal property, the truth was that we were his personal property.  He strutted up and down in front, as well as in back, of our house, coming and going as he pleased.  The area kids staged several rooster hunts, but the bantam, with a  verbal assist from our daughter, always managed to secure himself in a nearby tree, a smirk on his beak and a “cock-a-doodle-doo” on the tip of his tongue.

     About a week into this activity, there was an early-morning knock on our door.   Was it Brewster, with a request for pancakes?  No, it was a greeting from a gentleman who turned out to be our neighbor.

     “Hello,” he said, shaking my hand.

     “I’m your neighbor.  Welcome to Los Angeles.  I can see from your license plate that you’re down from Oregon.  Didn’t happen too bring a rooster with you?”

     Oh no, could it be true?  Had the rooster arrived the same day we’d reached town?  If that were the case, then every resident within a rooster’s striek was of the opinion that the damn fowl was ours.

     I assured the fellow that Brewster and I had never met, that he wasn’t connected to our family, that I’d assumed he come with the house, and that, in fact, I’d done everything short of calling the authorities to get him the hell out of our yard.

     “Don’t worry about the authorities,” he said, “I’ve already called the Department of Animal Regulation.”

     He shook my hand again, and then as an afterthought, told me it was against the law to bring a rooster across a state line.

     I couldn’t’ blame the guy for being upset, but at the same time, I was beginning to see Brewster’s side.  They were ganging up on him, and I’ave always rooted for the underdog – or in this case, the underrooster.

     My wife, who seemed to be growing resigned to bantam eccentricities, suggested we catch Brewster and donates him to a nursery school.  That sounded a whole lot more reasonable than donating him to a pot of soup, and so I set out to capture our friend as quickly as possible.

     Rooster hunting, never one of my strong points – I don’t even have a license – required tree climbing ability, also one of my inadequacies.  And just as I’d figured out how to get from limb A to limb C, Brewster flew past me.

     “Pretty good view,” a voice said, and for a moment I was willing to believe that the bird could articulate when well-motivated.

     “You see any roosters around here?” the speaker continued.

     Looking down, I spotted a uniformed individual, field glasses in hand and dandruff on her shoulders.

     “We’ve had a complaint about your rooster,” she told me as I made my way to the ground floor.

     “It’s not mine,” I explained.

     “That’s not the way we heard it.”

     “Circumstantal evidence.”

     Just then, Brewster came walking up the drive.

     “Tell her you don’t belong to us,” I shouted, but he refused to confirm this fact.

     “I was just trying to catch him and cart him off to a nursery school.”

     She nodded, jotting a few notes down on her pad, and explaining she had only come to investigate. Someone else, an authorized deputy, would be by to assure Brewster’s incarceration.  The rooster didn’t’ seem nearly as frightened by this information as I did.  Maybe he knew a good lawyer.  Anyhow, he marched to within a foot of our dog, teased Gabby just enough to create an interest, and then flew back to the tree.

     The city bird catcher never showed.   Unfortunately, his presence became moot.  For that evening, Brewster attempted to repeat his little game with our dog.  It was a plain case of ‘once too often.”  I will say only that even a handsome, cunning, and intelligent rooster can miscalculate.  This time, the results were feather-raising.

     Rebecca cried.  My wife did her best to hold back her tears.  I felt a little sick to my stomach. Even the dog looked remorseful. 

     And so we came to bury the bird.

     I won’t say I miss him, but every time I open a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle, I get a lump in my throat that’s not a stuck piece of celery. 

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