An old friend of mine Bob lives in the Glassel Park suburb of Los Angeles, kind of the Tijuana of LA. Glassel Park has a high percentage of Mexican folk who brought their way of life along with them, and their chickens too.
Now chickens to me are good to eat, but I get my chickens from Ralphs supermarket all pre-packaged and ready to cook. No so with Bob’s neighbors, who seem to have herds (swarms? gaggles?) of chickens everywhere. Chickens crossing the street. Chickens on roofs of houses. Chickens in trees. And of course, chickens in Bob’s front yard, back yard, and on the roof of his house.
One bad thing about live chickens is that they are constantly eating and crapping all over everything, and leave a big mess of “croup” which for all you city folk are feathers mixed with chicken poop. And chickens are stupid, and mean to top it off.
So last week end Bob called to see if I could help him get rid of the dozens of chickens that took over his property. I felt this wouldn’t be a big deal, as chickens are stupid, and we could take care of them without any problems. Oh how wrong was I…
So I girded myself with a roll of chicken wire, a civil war Calvary saber, a metal trash can, and a .22 pellet rifle. Bob and I set up a Rube-Goldberg chicken trap out of the chicken wire, a sheet of cardboard and the trash can. We figured that it wouldn’t be fair just to shoot the chickens and throw ‘em away, but instead trap them, and turn them over to the proper authorities.
So we started herding the chickens into the combo chicken run/trap when we heard a loud COCK A DOODLE DOOOO come from Bob’s backyard. “Uh oh” Bob said, the rooster had arrived.
Big fucking deal, the rooster. Ha, bring it on. I’ll take care of that rooster, as I unsheathed the saber and strode into Bob’s back yard, unaware of the horror that was about to befall me.
Bob’s backyard is kind of overgrown, with big Avocado trees lining the fence between his neighbor’s properties. Holding the saber at an arms length, I searched the small back yard for any signs of the rooster. Nothing. Suddenly a rustling noise came from the tree above me, and as I looked up, there was the rooster, its big goofy rooster head turned sideways to get a better look at me, and jockeying for position as if to pounce. This was no small rooster; let me tell you, it was about the size of a goddamn poodle. Thoughts of being disfigured at the hands (feet?) of a rooster, or being blinded by the wildly pecking beak of this monster were too much, so I bolted back to my truck to grab my pellet rifle. Obviously I needed something better than my saber for this job.
The rooster took this as an act of cowardice on my part, and jumped down from the tree like a leopard, and started chasing me, squawking and flapping its wings, quite impressive for a chicken. So I turned the rooster with a quick thrust of my saber, where it flapped back into the same tree. Phew, that was a close call. A rouge rooster. This beast must be put down for the safety of the community.
I quickly loaded the pellet rifle and got as close to the rooster as I dared, took deadly aim and shot the bird in the abdomen somewhere, when it made its final squawk and fell dead on the ground. By this time all the commotion had caused Bob’s neighbors to line up against the fence, and when they saw the rooster was dead, they started clapping and cheering; some genuflected, some prayed and looked to the sky. An old man wearing a serape and sombrero thanked me, and offered me a papaya as a tribute to my courage “Thank you senior, theeze rooster has been always a beeg problem, always with the noise, and chasing the women around.”
I toke the papaya and said “Thank you compares, my job here is done.” As I took a long swig of something that tasted like tequila from a bota bag one of the women handed me. The neighbor kids had already retrieved the dead rooster, and were kicking it around in the street, like a soccer ball.
Now I know how those big game hunters felt after a kill. Man against beast. That rooster has messed with the wrong gringo amigo.
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