While walking at first light a couple of weeks ago I heard distinctively different (and very loud) crowing coming from the alley where Walnut curves south around Kansas Street … so I decided to investigate.
There I found three crowers — a red, a black and a white rooster who I’ve named Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. Cocks whose volume was all the louder because they’d climbed into the bare branches of a redbud tree to broadcast. I gazed up over a 6-foot wooden fence from the gravel alley, amazed, as they took turns calling out morning song in their distinctive voices.
Turning west toward home, I tried to recall ever seeing even one rooster in a tree, let alone three of them. Growing up, our backyard was boundaried by neighbors’ chicken yards (left field and center field). I also had a morning paper route that put me on the street at daybreak, so I had plenty of experience with roosters.
Never saw one in a tree, though.
I did some research and found that not only roosters, but also hens climb trees. Not like a squirrel, but by hopping and fluttering up branches. Likely an instinctual call to safety in avoiding ground predators. Also, some appear to do it just to have a little climbing fun, like many of us did as kids. Sometimes as high as 20 feet.
Chickens have spawned a lot of idioms through the years. There’s ‘counting your chickens’, ‘chicken feed’, ‘the chicken or the egg’, ‘playing chicken’, ‘no spring chicken’, ‘chicken with its head cut off’, etc. But the only one that comes to mind about roosters is ‘cock of walk.’
I clearly remember the chickens out back scrambling to the fence in a frenzy when they saw me coming with kitchen scraps. And that I would take care to avoid the rooster when going into their domain to retrieve a baseball. But I never thought of them as particularly intelligent.
According to The Scientific American, they are. “In recent years, scientists have learned that this bird can be deceptive and cunning, that it possesses communication skills on par with those of some primates and that it uses sophisticated signals to convey its intentions. When making decisions, the chicken takes into account its own prior experience and knowledge surrounding the situation. It can solve complex problems and empathizes with individuals that are in danger.”
Indeed, notable southern writer, Flannery O’Connor, first gained notice when, at age six, she taught a chicken to walk backward and was featured in newsreels across the country.
Studies show dominant males and dominant females head each flock, and as in most human societies, those in charge get what they want, whether it be food, space or sex, mostly by keeping their subordinates in line. Males spend much of their time strutting their stuff for the females and providing them with food; females carefully observe the males, judging them on their actions and remembering what each had done in the past; they shunned the ones that were deceptive or nasty. A rooster's reputation is important to his long-term success with the hens, and competition for the females is fierce.
The Greeks believed that even lions were afraid of roosters. The Romans used chickens as oracles. The chickens were fed a special kind of cake when a prediction was needed. If the chickens stayed in their cage, made noises, beat their wings, or flew away, the omen was bad; if they ate, the omen was good.
In the New Testament, Jesus prophesied his betrayal by Peter with, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”
Across the world, the rooster symbolizes such things as new beginnings, courage, and vigilance, stemming from its crow announcing sunrise, but also represents spiritual awakening, protection, and even sin & redemption (linked to Peter's denial of Jesus in the gospels).
Locally, the 1978 film “Rooster: Spurs of Death!,” a low budget film produced by Gene Bicknell in which he also acts, has gained some notoriety over the years as something of a cheesy cult classic about cockfighting.
Speaking of which, there was a popular indoor arena (cockpit) in north Frontenac where I experienced the bloody sport one afternoon. It was a kind of madness. An unforgettable cacophony of handlers’ commands, roosters crowing and squawking, and men and women yelling odds and bets as they encouraged the roosters. I remember one woman’s fanatic call to a cock to rip his opponent with sharpened spurs, “Shoot Big Red! Shoot!”
And why do the cocks crow? Turns out it’s not because of dawn. The circadian rhythm of the 24-hour day tells them to do it, even if they can't see the sun come up. So, you can’t really make a rooster be quiet in the morning, even if they’re kept in the dark.
The three tenors (Luciano, Plácido and José) don’t have to worry about that, though, as they’re outside and have a redbud to climb into. You can hear them perform daily near the corner of Walnut & Kansas … if you’re willing to ‘get up with the chickens.’
J.T Knoll can be reached at 620-704-1309 or [email protected]
