Time, and time again, my best lessons in patience are learned through the husbandry of an animal. I'm slowly realizing that animals have a remarkable way of *gasp* taking care of themselves. They don't really need us that much. Go figure!
Several months ago, our youngest dog jammed himself all up with a store bought bone. Two vets, three days of vomit and diarrhea and a 275.00 bill later, he passed all of his funk without any human intervention. none. zip. nothing.
Patience. Patience would have been the better investment.
A week ago, one of my two roos started cock-a-doodle-doing with new determination. All morning, all afternoon, at 3 am? Are you kidding me? Then, just to make sure he clamped my right eye shut, he decided to challenge the chosen breeding roo to a duel.
Cock fights in the backyard. How lovely.
I really thought a winner would quickly be decided and we could all get back to addressing the doodle-doo drama. Oh no. They zig-zagged ALL over the yard, neck feathers flared, rolling, pecking, sparring. While I consulted Dr. Google about the duration of said fights, Brian stood, with his coffee, staring out the back window, and muttered, "Too bad Michael Vik ruined it for everyone, we could call the neighbors and have a cock fight party."
No time to laugh at his dry wit, as I read "losing an eye is likely." Alrightie then. We sent the dogs out to break it up, while I pulled on my boots and looked for gloves.
On the up side, breaking up a cock fight is easy business; They're so fixated on each other that they hardly noticed me walking up on them. I grabbed the smallest of the two and good grief, what a bloody mess. Fortunately, I have a second coop all set up so confinement was a breeze. Except, confinement just elevated the doodling drama to an all new level.
It was time to move one of them out to the farm. I spent two days screwing around out there trying to figure out where to put chickens. In my efforts to set up something "quick and easy" I can say now that my time would have been better spent had I just dropped the chickens at the curb and headed to town for ice cream.
Instead, I packed up "trouble maker" and a couple of rolls of fencing and headed to our farm. I let him out of his crate-of-shame because he looked down right pissed and a little pathetic. Of course he managed to slip out of the barn while my back was turned. So I fussed with fencing, bedding, food and water while he strutted around his new digs. He used to come when I called him. He used to like me. He used to do a lot of thingd before I stuffed him into a cat carrier.
I waited for twilight to fall on the farm so I could catch him and put him in the new coop. I'd spent the better part of two days working on that coop, I wasn't just going to let the coyotes eat him. Although, I confess, it was a fleeting thought. Instead, I walked around with loppers and sniped the never ending sea of stray sapplings and waited. Roo went into my tool shed, settled on the stack of landscape timbers and went to sleep.
huh.
Here's where I have to admit that I liked the roosting spot he picked better than the roosting spot I'd picked.
I set a water fount and tray of food on the floor for his breakfast tomorrow and shut the door. As I walked to my car, I patted myself on the back for spending the last two days getting the new BROODING pen all set up in the barn. *wink*
patience.
Oh, those darn roosters! I've been waiting for mine to have a tif...so far, so good. :)
I love how you've captured this moment.
Posted by: Laurie | April 01, 2011 at 12:59 PM
Hopefully yours remains true. This roo went from zero to nutters almost over night.
Posted by: katie | April 02, 2011 at 10:42 PM