Cocks

Since arriving here, I have necessarily gotten used to the cockadoodledo of the roosters. I can’t exactly sleep through the frequent crows which start at 4am and continue until dusk, but I can now passively acknowledge them while staying restful. It took me 2 weeks to achieve this.

As I’m getting ready in the morning, I can’t help but imagine the roosters are saying things. Imagine “Go to the bathroooooom” to the tune of cockadoodledo. I mean, it would have to be in the voice my younger brother would put on, when we were kids, to imitate a scratchy but syrupy, old-lady voice and I’m not sure why they would be saying, ‘go to the bathroom’ when everyone else here says ‘comfort room’. But one thing is for sure, ‘comfort room’ does not fit.

I feel like what they most often say is (and again, imagine it to the cockadoodledo tune) ‘I don’t want to’. Now, these declarations could be referring to any number of things: ‘I don’t want to (eat this)’, ‘I don’t want to (listen to you others cawing anymore)’…. There are several cocks just below my window who take turns crowing. They are attached to trunks of trees or sticks in the ground with strings tied to one of their chicken-like ankles. They can’t reach each other or the hen house (the hens roam free). These are big, boisterous cocks with puffed up breasts and, I imagine, bred for fighting. So, when I hear them declare to the world, ‘I don’t want to’, I think their fate is mistaken. Like the child whose parents forced her into practicing piano through cramped fingers and a stiff back, and she will never be the famous pianist that they imagine. She might, for example, after many unsuccessful applications to professional orchestras, end up working as a server or bus driver; her manual and dorsal problems persisting. The mistaken fate of these cocks, however, is a bit more gruesome.