Cocktales

If it wasn't the barking of the neighbor's dogs, it was the crowing of the dang rooster.

I was telling my friend about my troubles sleeping and troubles of not sleeping.

Try living next door to that rooster, she said. It's right outside my bedroom window.

For weeks now the crowing of roosters has been traveling right through the walls and windows of my house, through the pillow over my head and even through the cheap foam earplugs I found in my toolbox.

I have become an early riser. I'm up with the roosters. And not at the break of dawn, either.

Me and the roosters are up before dawn has even bent.

Not long after the bars here in Spirit Lake close.

That's how early the roosters rise.

When my friend told me that, after weeks of complaining to her neighbors, they showed up on her step with an apology and a roasting pan with a dressed rooster and fixings for side dishes, I was giddy with the idea of a good night's sleep.

But early the next morning. Again.

I know a rooster with it's head cut off can still run around, but can it crow? Especially once it's been dressed and roasted and digested?

Another friend clued me in.

She lives a couple blocks away and has a rooster. I didn't know. 

And she's given a rooster to a neighbor and another neighbor has a rooster, too.

"All three of them get going at once," she said. "Like they're talking back and forth."

I don't understand the point of roosters.

But that's just me. I haven't known many roosters and the ones I have weren't worth knowing.

My brothers had one once. His name was Timmy and he was more like an attack dog. Nobody dared go out the front door in shorts. Shin guards were a safe bet.

Grandpa Doug told me they took in a rooster once because its owners couldn't care for it any more.

It was a mean one, too, he said.

It went after the mailman and the milkman and the census takers.

They tied a baseball bat to one of its legs to slow it down some.

That didn't help.

There was only one thing left to do.

Rooster's tough meat, he says. You have to boil it slow.