During the last few days of August, I traveled to San Diego for my first-ever work conference COVID-style. It was energizing, productive, and my vaccine held up. I’m not quite sure how it came up, but at some point I mentioned Rooster Creek.
What exactly is Rooster Creek you might ask? It seems to be a colloquial name for this little strip of park in the small village of Arroyo Grande just south of us. Oh wait, now it’s coming back to me…
I was lamenting my rooster problem. Or the “rooster ploblem” as we like to say a’la Nate 2013. As I’d suspected, the two little Sandos were not in fact just curious hens but big, bad, voodoo daddies. I really don’t know why I ever doubted myself. I know little boys when I see them. And when they repeatedly wake me up in the wee hours.
So I’m in San Diego and I’m lamenting the fact that we now have two fartin’ roosters, not just one. James already attempted to return the roosters to Tractor Supply as they falsely sold us pullets. When they wouldn’t take them, he chose not to conveniently drop them off in the back of the store. I guess maybe they have security cameras…
So we figure our options are:
1. Hire Neighbor James to solve my problem… again
2. Surreptitiously take them to Rooster Creek, or
3. Create my own new Rooster Creek down at the bottom of the mountain
My teammate Kate hears me talking about Rooster Creek and she envisions gentlemen farmers from miles around sacking their unwanted roosters in burlap bags and dropping them from above into a rushing creek. Oh sweet, sweet Kate. Kate is from New York City and apparently has no idea that California creeks are dry.
In fact, Rooster Creek is a darling little park along the side of an overgrown dry creek bed. Roosters are clearly left in the dead of night, despite the threateningly-worded deterrent signage, to live out a beautiful well-fed life amidst farmers’ markets and joyful chicken-chasing children.
As much as I like fantasizing about what I’ll wear, what I’ll say to the authorities if I’m caught, and how I’ll inconspicuously lose two roosters in a dark park eleven miles from my home, we come up with option 4. Kick the boys out of the coop. Get a move on Salty and Peppah. So the twins begin strutting around our property like they own the place. Every day they climb the stairs to the second floor of the barn, make a grand entrance as a Zoom background, and glare at me while they peck the window. After I’m sufficiently intimidated, they take the stairs back down to find their next victim.
This goes on for a few weeks. Nate and James succumb to various bouts of empathy and bullying and let them back into the coop to terrorize the hens and each other before booting them back out again. On Wednesday night, we had a huge wind storm and the twins were out on their own. I woke-up in the 5:00 hour Thursday morning and at some point I hear a few seconds of buck-bucking near the back deck. Then… silence.
I had to be at work for a 7:00AM Zoom and didn’t have a chance to check on the rooster bullies.
Later that evening, James tells me how Salty came running into the coop like a bat outta hell, panting from his sunrise brush with death. The human boys seem somewhat relieved and have spun a story that Pepper’s become breakfast for a little den of baby foxes. Who doesn’t love baby foxes? RIP in the chat, Pepper.
The Rooster Ploblem is now half solved.