Don’t
Get Fooled By a Slick Talking Rooster Type:
Chicken
sex is part of the ambiance and romance of having a hobby farm. It’s random.
It’s funny. It’s constant.
Our
Mac daddy Americanus rooster, Roadie, is a gorgeous example of why hens just
can’t say no. Mostly because they have brains the size of peas (thus the term
pea brained) and really short memories.
Roadie
is a lover-boy. His favorite seal-the-deal strategy is to fake finding a juicy
worm or chubby grub and then make lovely clucky noises that being interpreted
mean, come over hear you darling plump hens and share this lovely chubby grub
with me. Cluckity, cluck, bock, bock, yum . . .
And
those hens come running—every single time—twenty times a day. While they’ve got
their heads down expecting to find a crisp cricket dinner, he jumps them.
Twenty. Times. A. Day.
Seriously? Sometimes I want to yell at my hens,
“He’s lying to you. He’s a liar. There’s no grub, worm, or cricket. He just
wants in your pants. AGAIN!”
They
never learn, but then again they’re chickens with peas for brains.
Side
Note: If the fake cricket scam doesn’t work he stretches one wing to the ground
and prances like a court jester. The hens dazzled by his magnificence forget
what they were doing. Then he jumps them.
When
I was a kid we had a pair of roosters that used to tag team the hens. One would
pin the poor gal’s head to the ground while the other one well . . . jumped
her, and then they would switch. It was like having a pair of serial rapists
running amok in the barn. Then there was the hen that was blind in one eye and
how they used to sneak up on her bad side. Eagles murdered those nasty
roosters, reducing them to two piles of bloody feathers. It was hard to feel
bad.
Moral
of the story: Get the cricket up
front.
Hens
Squabbling With Other Hens Does Not Pay:
Our
hens squabble. They want to lay their eggs in the same nest at the same time so
they sit on each other. Some pecking may be involved. Or they occasionally
argue over a lovely bit of greenery in the yard. Bok. Bok. Cluckity. Step off,
you clucking piece of . . . Bok!
Roadie
the Mac Daddy Rooster hears them fighting, knows they’re distracted, races over,
and then jumps on one or all.
Sigh.
The
Moral of the Story: Folks who want
us to believe that we are no different than the animals in my chicken coop
should spend some time in my chicken coop.
Here’s
the truth of it. I only need one rooster for a whole flock of ditzy hens. Heads
up gentlemen.
Linda
(Henny Penny) Zern
