There's no way to coop up 'ambition'

Last weekend, I bid both Mama and Daddy farewell for a few days away from Epsom. My beet-pickling pals, John and Bev Lazar, were Pennsylvania bound for the weekend and in need of a house-sitter — or rather, chicken-sitter. And so, I answered their call to the coop, where I braced myself for a battle with their backyard biddies.

To be fair, it wasn’t the female members of the flock that signaled the weekend warfare. Indeed, it was another cluck that caused me to curse and fuss that Saturday night, spearheading quite a moonlit cockfight. By battle’s end, I’d clasped the feathered fiend into my bare hands. And thrusting the rowdy rooster into his coop, I’d hollered out his newly appointed name — one that indicated his poultry parents were not married.

Nonetheless, my Saturday night squabble with the squawking savage evoked the memory of another beaked brute — my childhood pet rooster, Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo.

I was 10 years old the day when Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo made his way to Epsom and into my Daddy’s chicken coop. While the young Rhode Island Red clucked and crowed his “Here I am!” to my family and our five hens, Daddy gathered feed for the feathered flock. Meanwhile, a disapproving Mama dried dishes by the kitchen sink and, peering from the kitchen sink window, mouthed a few choice words.

A conventional cluck, Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo rendered his female roost-mates far beneath his pecking order. Likewise, his chauvinism extended beyond the poultry pen, attacking his female tenders, my sisters and me, with outstretched talons.

“You better put some pants on before you go out there,” Mama cautioned me one day as, clad in shorts, I embarked on an early morning egg gathering. “That rooster will claw your bare legs up one side and down the other!”

And so I traded my scrappy shorts for a pair of paint-stained jeans and headed for the backyard chicken coop.

“Bawk, bawk, bawk!” cried Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo, red feathers flapping as he flew towards me. Talons tearing into my Levis, the cranky rooster commenced to pecking at me until I dashed free from the fowl’s fury — forfeiting the day’s eggs.

As Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo matured into manhood, his chauvinistic taunts transitioned into totalitarian rooster rule. And when it came to the hens, well ... let’s say Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo had “ambition.”

“Mama! What’s Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo doing to Chicken Little!” I hollered one morning, while white feathers flapped from our most mature madam of the hen house.

As Mama explained “ambition” to me, Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo laid claim to his second pick of the chicken clique, Bo Peep. Soon, Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo had worn the hind feathers off of both of those hens.

“Those chickens don’t look so good,” Mama remarked one afternoon to my daddy, after another round of Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo’s ambition.

Daddy’s only answer was silence, save the nodding of his straw hat-clad head. And then he lit a cigarette.

Years passed — and likewise, so did those chickens. The hens first flew the coop to the hereafter. Mr. Cock-a-diddle-doo followed the flock shortly thereafter, where I’m sure he faced a mighty foul judgment from his maker. And eventually, that old chicken coop was torn down and replaced by an outdoor utility building, destined to be Daddy’s workshop and hideaway from Mama and my sisters. That is, until I moved back home and converted it into a storage unit.

And so, our story ends with a lot of lost ambition and six dead chickens — and Daddy cooped in a house full of “hens,” still nodding his head in silence. And still smoking cigarettes.



Read more: The Daily Dispatch - There’s no way to coop up ‘ambition’