The "Ha Ha" Rooster
source: Pete Linforth, "The Digital Artist," Pixabay
He was the biggest, meanest, handsomest
banty rooster we ever owned. Fastest bird ever to run on land, we were certain, even though we grew up watching "Road Runner" cartoons and our rooster didn't stir up cyclones of dust the way Road Runner did, but we were on a farm in the Midwest, or we'd surely have seen those dust-nados in his wake.
Also, we were too busy running for the house without looking back to see what this Rooster looked like in "Charge!" mode.
We knew why he hated us. We gathered eggs every day, and Lord knows how many of them had been fertilized by him. We were stealing his unborn children!
How many times we ran screaming,
straight from the chicken house to the kitchen door! When we got inside, we'd say "Ha, ha, Rooster, you didn't get me!"
One of his progeny did get escape our breakfast skillet and grew up to be a fine looking rooster, so the Ha-Ha Rooster went to the chopping block.
We'd tiptoe into the chicken house at night with a flashlight. Mom carried something that looked like a medieval torture device: a wooden handle with a long iron wire that curved into a hook at the end.
Vintage Catcher Hook, Country Farm Barn Coop Primitivevia @eBay
It's usually called a leg-hook, but the way I remember it, Mom used it as a neck-hook.
She'd s-l-o-w-l-y reach forward with it, aiming carefully, then hook a hen or a rooster by the neck, and we kids would help stuff it into the wooden cage and slide the lid shut. Come morning, the head chopping would begin.
Primitive Wooden Chicken Crate via @eBay
We got the last laugh, Ha-Ha Rooster,
and you tasted good, as I recall, but all these years later I do not file that away as a happy memory. You were just doing what nature had dictated that you do.
And so were we.