Carusoe: Friend or Foe?

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Caruso: Friend or Foe? By Michael Young      A cold chill permeated the air and I tucked my foot back under the covers. I pulled my arms in close to my body to feel the warmth given out from my body’s core. I started to drift back to sleep when I heard it. I was a noise coming from some distant place. What was it? My mind now engaged in this puzzle to try and identify the phantom noise. All hope of sleeping in were now evaporating as my mind sorted through a catalogue of noises and compared what I was hearing to a list of sounds turning in my head. The noise was getting louder and closer as if it were some mysterious invader on a mission to put an end to my sleep. There I had it. My mind had settled on a match. This sound was a chicken! No not a chicken but a rooster. Yes the noise is now a clearly audible crowing and it’s getting closer and louder.      All hope of sleep is gone now and I am interested in seeing this strange anomaly. The wife and I have lived here in this small community for close to 19 years now and we have never heard a rooster crowing in the early morning hours.      I slowly crawled out of our bed and felt the cold hit my body.  I sat on the edge of the bed and stretched and yawned rubbed my eyes and then slipping on my slippers and robe, I headed down stairs to turn on the heater. I could hear the crowing and it seemed to settle in our back yard now. I counted the seconds between the out bursts of poultry song. Five seconds were between each crowing. This thing was like a machine gun. With just a few seconds between blasts!      Having turned on the heater I then made my way to the back door at the perimeter of the kitchen. I opened the blinds and there was the most beautiful rooster I had ever seen. It was a Rode Island Red and he was perched on my wife’s patio swing. He puffed up his neck feathers and flapped his wings and let out another round of crowing.       The rooster looked at me and jumped down from his perch on the swing and he strolled closer to the window and eyed me with his head cocked to first one side then the other. He didn’t seem to be afraid of me and I moved slowly and opened the door.  He was now standing under a bird feeder that we had put out for the local birds. It hung from the patio roof and swung back and forth in the light breeze. The rooster eyeballed the feeder. Did he know what the feeder was? Could he smell the seed that filled the feeder? No how could he smell the seed? I couldn’t smell the seed. Did he have some super nostrils that only roosters had that could pick up the scent of bird seed? Is that how he found his way to my back yard…by following the scent of bird seed on the wind?      I went to the feeder and took it down from the patio and spilled some of the seed on the ground.  The rooster didn’t rush in to get the seed but waited for me to back away. He slowly moved in and started to peck at the seed. I sat down on a black rod iron patio chair and watched as the bird was feeding. He seemed to like the lighter colored seeds and ate them first. He was highly proficient with his beak and didn’t miss a seed. I wondered how he kept from hurting himself by banging his beak on the hard concrete patio surface. But it didn’t seem to bother him and he continued until all the lighter colored seeds were eaten. He then turned and looked at me again. He let out a loud crow as if to say, hey buddy what happened to all the lighter colored seed? I thought just what we need around here a demanding rooster. I didn’t move from my chair and he jumped up on a redwood bench and then to the table where he watched me for a while. He again cocked his head from side to side. I guess he realized that I was not going to add to the pile of seed. He jumped down and went after the darker seeds this time.  This was a new experience for me and I soon forgot how he had just woken me and kept me from returning to my sleep. I was soon trying to come up with a name for the rooster and settled on Cogburn. Rooster Cogburn.      The rooster hung around the yard most of the day and the wife and I enjoyed watching his antics as he scratched the ground looking for bugs to eat. I even started to think that it wouldn’t be too bad to have him around. Yeah, he could eat insect pests in the yard. Clark, who needs you when we have Rooster Cogburn!      The day went on and Rooster Cogburn disappeared. I suspected he had returned to what chicken coop he came from. That night just before bed I heard a tapping at the back door. I went down to the kitchen and turned on the patio light and there he was perched on the rail of our gazebo. He looked to be roosting there for the night. I bid him a good night and went to bed.       The next day I was awaken from a sound sleep to the realization that Cogburn was tapping at the back door and crowing to beat the band. I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was five in the morning! What on earth was this rooster singing about so early? I lay there and tried to ignore the crowing but it seemed he sang all the louder. The wife was stirring and then was awake.      “Is that rooster here again?” She asked sleepily.      “Yeah, He spent the night.” I answered.     “Can you please go tell him to be quiet? I want to try and go back to sleep.” She rolled over and covered her head with the pillow.      I got up from bed and put on my slippers and robe and made the trip to the kitchen door. I was thinking to myself that all I needed was a crazy rooster who thought he was Caruso singing in my back yard at such an early hour. I turned on the light and there he was standing under the bird feeder. He looked at me and seemed to be demanding that I feed him again. This time there was no shyness in his manner but a bit of a demanding unwanted guest type attitude. I gave in thinking that if I feed him maybe he would stop singing his feed me ballad. This worked and all was quiet and he took his prejudicial approach to eating all the white seeds first. Then came the obvious demand for more white seed and finally the return to the darker seed. Soon the wife was down stairs and we were both holding our cups of coffee and rubbing our sleepy eyes.      “What is that bird’s problem and why is he picking on us?” She asked between sips of her coffee.      “I don’t know, maybe he was a cat in his first life and came back because I fed him. You know they say don’t feed stray cats because they will always come back. Well maybe that applies to roosters too.” After I said it I thought of how ridiculous it sounded, but it was too early for me to make much sense of anything.      That day Caruso (the new name I took to calling him) hung around most of the day. He would tap at the door and seemed to want our companionship as well as our bird seed. At one point it became very quiet outside and I opened the door to peak outside and looked around. I could not see Caruso anywhere. I stepped further outside and peaked around a corner and he was standing there right at the edge of the corner peaking around at me. His little head was cocked to one side and he was looking up at me with the eye on his left side of his beak. I walked back to the patio and sat on the chair. A quick look around and I could see that there was cleaning up to do. Caruso had been leaving evidence of his visit everywhere! He trotted up to me and with a little jump he flew up and landed on the bench across from me. There he sat staring at me then at the bird feeder then back at me.      “You are too much Caruso! You wanted me to come out here to check to see if you were around and all the time you were just baiting me to come out so you could catch me and get me to give you more bird feed! You were just hiding around the corner all the time. Why don’t you do some good around here and get to eating bugs!” I was starting to get a little upset thinking that I was being hoodwinked by a dang Rooster.      This day went by and our unwanted guest had settled in for the night again perched above my wife patio swing which now had become a patio rooster toilet.     This continued on for several days and my wife and I were not getting any sleep past 5am. I had tried the Humane Society but they never responded. Apparently they wanted nothing to do with roosters either.      On the sixth day I took a walk around the neighborhood hoping to see someone who was looking for their lost rooster. I spied each pole each light pole for a poster. You know the signs (Have you seen my dog or cat? There is always a funky picture of the dog or cat drawn by the child that put the poster up).      I had to return home as I couldn’t find anyone missing a rooster. I did get some mean looks from the angry neighbors who obviously thought the rooster was mine. They too were getting woken up by Caruso. I walked into the house and told my wife that the rooster might be a good way to get back at the neighbor behind us who had a dog that barked all day. Yeah now he knew what it was like! I felt like running over there and shouting, “My rooster can lick your dog!” Then the reality sunk in and I understood that not only did I have to listen to a barking dog but had to listen to a demanding rooster too. I was the looser all around!      Oh we tried everything for the next few days. I put him out of the yard but he would fly right back in. Who said roosters couldn’t fly? More calls to the humane society were made which were just as promptly ignored as the first. I’ve asked for recipes for fried rooster on the Facebook web site. I didn’t get any responses. The only result was that my cousin from Colorado who was a member of every humane group from save the whales to save the tree frogs started a save the rooster club. Boy was I pissed when I found out my wife joined. The recipe was a bad idea anyway and   I don’t think I could bring myself to kill Caruso. Now my wife handled things differently. She called people to tell them about the rooster in her back yard. She would take the phone to the door and say “Oh listen to him crow!” and of course Caruso would pick that time to be shy. I told her he was just like a little kid. They never do anything when you want them to at the right time!     I don’t know what we will do to get rid of our unwanted guest. I only know he has worn out his welcome. You give a rooster an inch and they want to take a mile.      I think about the first day and how I thought he was so beautiful and now all I can say is it will be a beautiful day when he flies this coop!      Take my word for it, don’t ever feed a stray rooster!