Why I Hate Roosters

August 5, 2011 Why I Hate Roosters

As I may have stated in earlier posts, we have two roosters and some hens living on the compound. When you’re little, you read lots of storybooks set on farms where the rooster crows each morning and—along with the light of dawn—peacefully awakens all the other farm animals and the farmer himself. What those books don’t tell you, is that every animal—every cow, every pig, every damn sheep—and especially the farmer harbor an intense level of hate towards this rooster. They resent it with a passion. Books that told you otherwise were lying. I know this must be the case because you cannot live in the vicinity of a rooster and feel anything but blind rage towards it. This rooster could save me from a burning building and I think I still might hate it. This is why:

When I first got here, I lived on the opposite side of the hostel building that I do now. My window faced the garden, which is right next to the animal shed. Even with my window closed, at least one of the damn roosters still managed to wake me up every morning. And they aren’t crowing at a nice time like 7:30 am—they’re wide awake by 5 or 5:30. The sun rises here in the summer even before then. One morning in that room, I decided to look outside to see where the rooster actually was, because it was so loud that I could swear it was right outside my window. Lo and behold, where was the rooster but one foot away from the hostel building wall, crowing as loud as he could 10 feet below my window! What could possibly interest a rooster about standing next to a wall? Why was he so close to it that he was basically staring at it? This is when I knew the rooster had it in for me—it was trying to wake me up. When I moved into my room now on the other side of the hostel, the jerk followed me. Seriously. He came to this wall of the hostel and started crowing outside it at about5:20 every morning. Sometimes I can fall back asleep and forget about it—other mornings I lie awake and use my anger to cultivate a sort of revenge plan that doesn’t actually involve physical harm, as Arun (the man in charge of all the animals) is my friend. So far all I’ve really come up with is holding one of the little baby chicks hostage until the rooster agrees to crow somewhere else in the morning, but I don’t think this would affect him too much seeing as 3 of the chicks have already died in freak accidents and life has gone on as normal. Anyway this rooster wakes me up DAILY and even closed windows and earplugs cannot prevent it from succeeding.

the jerk, looking cocky

Now in general my language isn’t too bad. In the South at UNC, it still seemed to be a point of class to not use many obscenities while talking, especially for girls. In Chicagowhere I grew up, this wasn’t really the case. Regardless, depending on my company, the things that come out of my mouth aren’t usually that bad, in my opinion. But the words that can come out when the rooster wakes me up surprise even me sometimes. Most of my roommates over the years know the way I talk to my laptop when it stops working properly (which is all the time)—some horrible things have been said to it the numerous times the hard drive crashed during finals week, etc. I would say, however, to take that wrath and multiply by 40 to understand how I feel about this rooster. With the things I find myself saying to it, you would think this rooster had bullied me for years on the playground as kids, and then grown up to be the guy who replaces me at work and sleeps with my wife. On top of all that, he shows off his new iphone 4 when I just got an iphone 3—he’s that guy, a tool who is trying to piss me off. I just finished re-reading the Catcher in the Rye, a book famous for its repetitive use of certain obscenities, and sometimes all my tired brain can come up with when I first wake up is yelling “you sonovabitch chicken!” I like to think that calling it a chicken really gets to it. Not that it can hear me, I’ve only actually opened the window and yelled at it one time—it did run away too after I did so. One battle won but not the war…

Another reason why I hate them, they're always reproducing more annoying copies of themselves

Whenever I run into this chicken throughout my day, I make sure that an evil look, a pretend kick to the gut and the words “I hate you” are used, so that it can get the picture. To make all matters worse, they call roosters “cocks” here so I have to try to explain to Arun that “I hate the cock because it wakes me up in the morning” (the answer is no, it’s not possible to keep a straight face at this point, even though he doesn’t understand why I’m laughing). If they ever do decide to cycle out those roosters and eat them, I will fly back toIndiajust to be part of the process. If you think disruptive animal noises stop at roosters, you’re wrong. The baby goats cry when they can’t find their mom, which is all the time since they generally sit down most of the day and don’t follow her when she walks away—the baby girl goat does as it pleases while the other goats walk away and then freaks out as soon as they’re far enough away that she feels “left” there, but she DOESN’T MOVE and just stands there crying. It more or less mirrors my own behavior up until the age of around 8, which is probably why I inherently dislike it. You can also hear monkeys, cows, dogfights, and lizards throughout the day and night—even the toads are loud enough to create a racket.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for animals and nature in general. I would just appreciate nature knowing how to be quiet when I’m trying to rest. I had a baby lizard in my room a couple days ago that was smaller than my pinky finger, I didn’t even know what it was at first. It looked like a tadpole on my floor. It didn’t move much for a couple days and when I moved my bag the other morning, one of its legs was crumpled in a way that made it look like it was dead. It was sort of sad, I let out some sort of “oh no” cry when I found it. A couple hours later though it had moved a few inches. Emma and I investigated to find that it was playing dead—it was lying on its back with its millimeter-length limbs sprawled to the sides, but it was breathing. I got one of the boys to put it on a piece of paper and brought it outside thinking it would be able to find food. Then Emma stated the obvious, that it was too small to move around easily and would probably be stepped on or eaten by something else soon. This was devastating—I went back for it immediately but it was already gone. This is when I decided that I had wanted to keep it as a pet all along and name it Patrick, but I never found it. Later that day it was pouring out, and while joking around with Emma she responded to an insult from me by saying that my lizard had no doubt drowned by now—I was re-washed with sorrow for Patrick. I’ve looked for him a couple more times, but the truth is that he’s gone and he thinks I never cared about him. You don’t know what you want until it’s gone—such is life. Trust me though, if this rooster was gone and I got to sleep peacefully, I would not regret it. I’d wake up smiling to a plate full of chicken curry.

Patrick. You can barely see him but I want you to be able to see how small he is (was).

• 3 comments
• Posted under Uncategorized