The Runaway Rooster

Friday night I went to shut the chicken coop and noticed that our rooster was missing.  I looked all over thinking that he was accidentally locked up in the garage or something. When I couldn't find him, I started to feel guilty that I left the door open too long and turned my  chickens into a drive through meal for a hungry critter.  Thinking that he had come to an untimely end, I went to bed feeling a bit sad.

I woke up Saturday morning hoping to see him pecking around in the yard.  I didn't see him, but I did hear him.   Looking like some kind of vagrant, I set out in yesterday's clothes rattling a bucket of corn.   I walked down the road and came up our back trail and still hadn't seen him.  Then I heard him again and followed the sound to the neighbor's boat shed.  With the T-Roy the rooster located and safe, I headed home to get Matt and some tools.

A bit later, we set off down the road.  Natalie on her bike, Joey wearing his "fire tiger" boots (Natalie's old neon rainbow cheetah print rubber boots which he is positive are really boys boots), me pulling the wagon with a cat carrier and a fishing net in it and Matt walking along beside me with his big gloves on, we really were a sight to behold.  It was a regular parade.

It felt a bit like being in a Ray Stevens song.  "So there I was" with a fish net in my hands, chasin' a runaway rooster around the neighbor's yard.  Two adults and two small children running around in circles after a ten pound chicken for the better part of an hour.  At one point, he hid under the porch and needed the persuasion of a water hose to come out.  I bet the neighbor felt like he got front row seats at the circus.

In the end, we gave a wet rooster a wagon ride home and returned him to his coop full of waiting hens.  The story has a happy ending, but I have to say that this really not how I expected to start my long weekend.