Crouching Rooster, Hidden Chicken

Although Yokosuka didn't have the population or name-power of Tokyo, you still could expect very modern surroundings. The small collection of apartments that made up our block rolled neatly, San Francisco-style, down one side of a long hill ending at the busy 7-11 that brought in business from the cars and cabs racing up and down the lanes all times of the day; a local hobby store fulfilled just about every kind of traditional distraction you could think of (model boats, planes, trains and cars covered every square-inch), with an electronics boutique next door for the convenience of more technological distractions; a few clothing stores dotted the main strip (filled with merchandise that looked about 10-15 years out of style, but considering most of the clientele were housewives and the mothers of housewives 'function' far outweighed 'flash'), and there was also a bookstore, restaurant and coffee shop...just the core expectations of any small, but flourishing, town.

So with living within all of this zen-ish quiet for the past six months, I'm sure my husband Jon and I weren't the only ones on the block scrambling out of their skins when the rooster began screaming at 4 AM.

It wasn't that bright, crisp "Wakey-Uppy, Wakey-Uppy" kind of crowing, this sound ripped through your head in ragged shrills like the last effort death-throes of a woman being strangled...right in front of our apartment.

When Jon opened the front door he did indeed find a very handsome brown and red rooster strutting up and down the wide patio ruffling his feathers, and bouncing and waddling beside him was a fluffy golden chicken.

Whenever Jon, always the scientist, comes across an animal of any kind, his first instinct is to chat with it hoping it'll be enthralled enough by his conversation to let him observe it. The rooster seemed basically unimpressed with the chatter, but didn't mind being looked over as he pranced around by our front door and even crowed again just to make it understood that HE was the one who deserved the credit, not some other anonymous rooster that might be lurking around.

After about five more minutes of this display, we were over it and went back inside to start the day. Jon left for the Navy base awhile later and I was in the middle of cleaning the kitchen when the rooster went off again. I thought that he might be hungry, so I cracked open the door and dropped some crumbs of bread for him and his companion, and then peeked over at them through the window over the kitchen sink. The rooster strode out in front of his mate and checked out the offering, decidedly turned up his beak and marched away with the chicken obediently clucking in tow. I shrugged and went back to work.

That was around 6 A.M.

Jon was laughing when he came in that evening around 7, shutting the door on the rooster screaming at his heels. "I can't believe he's still here! He chased me up the stairs to the door."

I, on the other hand was way past the "Awww, how cuuute" stage. "He's been at it ALL day," I said placing dinner on the table. "I thought they only did that in the morning."

He shrugged, slightly smirking around a forkful of chicken. Anytime I get pissed off at anything other than him, he smirks like that. He once said that me being angry is as threatening as Minnie Mouse being angry.

He wasn't smirking at 11 o'clock that night, however.

Or at 1 A.M.

Or at 3 A.M.

Or for the next month.

We went through the traditional routes during that time: turning up the TV; leaving small bribes on the opposite side of the yard; chasing him while yelling and cursing and waving our arms; chasing him with a broom (at which point he'd just run in a broad circle around the patio and then into the safety zone of our landlord's garden beside it, and come back out again crowing just before one of us stomped away, slamming the door in defeat); chasing him with sticks (and occasionally whipping them at him). Even our huge, Garfield-esque cat, Oscar, was totally disinterested in helping us--apparently much too smart to bother embarrassing himself--by then he was content to just stretch on the kitchen window sill and turn his back on us in disgust. It actually got to the point where the rooster would crow and then run a couple of feet back when we opened the door and then crow directly on the other side of the door after we shut it.

And it’s not like we were crazy—I would see children walking by the house covering their ears, and mothers walking by shaking their heads as the rooster and chicken strode their barrier in front of the small steps leading up to the property.

One Saturday morning Jon had an idea. We got dressed and ventured down the hill to the hobby shop. Walking among the aisles of puzzles, boats, submarines, trains and cars I began to think that Jon was looking for a way to mentally distract himself, to find a toy to create some kind of "zone" for him to drop into so he wouldn't hear the rooster anymore, until he moved to the back of the room where there was a huge cabinet that spanned the length of the store with an arson of air guns. The manager was more than happy to help us the entire hour we were there, pulling out about several different styles until we finally settled on a small handgun, pellets and canister of CO2.

When we arrived home, the rooster and his companion were skulking outside our front door until they saw us and slowly drifted towards the landlord’s garden. Jon just walked by as though he hadn’t seen them; I was mentally throwing the Evil Eye at them. Once inside, Jon tossed the gear on the table and set up for battle while they softly clucked a strategy of their own on the other side.

About a half hour later we were watching TV when the screeching began and Jon jumped into action. He raced across the apartment, grabbed the gun off of the table and lined himself up against the doorjamb. I took my station, lying flat on my stomach on the floor, so I could see without being in the way. He slowly cracked the door open and waited until the rooster strolled into view and popped a shot off which in turn bounced right off of the rooster’s breast. He and the chicken jumped, the chicken squawked but the rooster blinked at Jon coolly.

So now they knew we meant business.

For about an hour.

Two days later Jon came home from work and slapped a .44 Magnum look-alike from the hobby shop on the kitchen table. Two hours later he opened fire on the rooster and the pellets bounced off of his side as he hopped to the other side of the house again.

Can a rooster laugh?

A week later in the semi-safe area of the balcony outside of our bedroom, Jon placed an unopened 12 oz. can of beer on the ledge.

“Watch this.” He strolled over to our small “garden” (a simple collection of bamboo trees, rubber tree plants and a few wilting jades) whipping out the sniper-styled air rifle he had stashed there and shot a pellet into the can.

The can had hopped less than an inch, and beer sprouted in a healthy stream out of both sides and began to foam at our feet.

We began to smile.

This time we didn't wait for the rooster's battle cry, Jon exploded through the front door, almost Rambo-style, and lined the rooster up in his scope (yes the thing actually had a scope on it) and squeezed the trigger. It screeched and thrashed his wings, hopping madly in a circle and then ran off to the other side of the house.

A day later he was back and crowing louder than before.

Finally, a few days afterwards, I was sitting in the living room reading Misery for the up-teenth time when I heard a loud BANG from outside. By the time I got to the window in our bedroom, half of the block had gathered in the street looking up and down the strip chatting and shrugging amongst themselves and to the others who began arriving. After about ten minutes, people went back inside and I gave up as well. Fifteen minutes later Jon walked through the front door. “Did you hear that?”

I looked at him for a minute wondering what he was talking about, until I remembered the ‘bang’. “What the hell was that?”

He explained:

He was driving up the hill in our old Bluebird when the he saw the rooster and chicken starting to cross the road. He gunned the engine and came racing up the street, at which point they tried to sprint to the other side and duck between the line of cars parked there, but Jon and the car managed to beat them to it--hence the BANG. Then when he saw people starting to look out of the windows, he flew all the way up to the dead end at the top of the street, parked and innocently walked down to our apartment house. When the neighbors were starting to go back inside he crept around and scanned the line of parked cars the two were trying to hide in and found the chicken. When he tapped the ruined carcass with his foot, the chicken actually rolled away like a deflated plastic bag of water into the gutter.

So there it was; he had finally vanquished the evil foe and his lackey.

A few days later there was a knock at our door. Our landlord’s teenage daughter was standing there crying asking if we’d seen her chicken because the feed in its bowl hadn’t been touched in days. She explained that her father had bought it as a pet for her about a month ago.

Two mornings after that, there was a raspy crowing at the door.

Jon and I looked at each other from across the breakfast table. “NO way.” I said,”There’s just no way.” Jon threw open the door, and it was the rooster.

Our rooster.

Our ‘Nevermore, Raven-Black Cat-Tell-Tale Heart’ (now forever known to our family as 'Rasputin') hopped on one leg while the other was barely a stump. He wore a partial mohawk where either the bumper or street had 'plucked' him, along with missing patches on his throat and sides. His left wing jutted out frozen in two crazy angles back and way, way up while he flapped the right one viciously. His chipped beak clacked and jutted like a dagger at us as his head twitched and eyes gleamed. He strained out another accusing scream.

Two weeks later, we moved out.