You ever had that moment when something scares you that shouldn’t,
but just for a second it does. Once that
moment has passed, you get a little mad that it happened. You think to yourself, how stupid was
that! I cannot believe I felt that
way. It is normally this way for snakes
for me, there’s a couple stories about that, but today is another story. A story that for just a second, I was that
little four year old boy again.
We have some friends that their house flooded during all of
the rain in the Houston area and I was able to go over and help them a couple
times to clean up, remove drywall and etc.
But since they cannot stay in their house, my buddy asked me to put his
chickens up at night. It just chickens
right, no problem. Until last night…
I approached the coop with no thought of the mortal danger I
might be in. After all, it’s just
chickens. As I walked up the rooster, I call
him Gallo de Diablo now, eased out the gate.
No problem, I just eased around him and like a good cowboy…I started
herding him back to the gate. That’s
when things went terribly wrong. Diablo
puffed up his chest and threw back his arms and charged me. Now, I’ll be honest…He’s a big chicken (as in
tall), but he is still just a chicken.
But for a four or five seconds I turned into that four year old boy that
had to gather eggs from our coop at home and fight, what I considered at the
time, a giant rooster. My heart rate was
up and my skin was covered with goose bumps (although I suppose these could be
considered chicken bumps, goose bumps are for geese and that’s another story
involving ropes and geese). I yelled at
the rooster (because yelling is effective when fighting off a tyrannosaurus
foghornus leghornus) and took a kick at him.
He backed off a little but was still defending his coop with all the
grit he could muster. At that point, we
just stared at each other, like we were in some spaghetti western; standing in
the dusty street waiting for the other rooster to make his move. I swear I could hear the theme music from all
of the gunfights in those movies.
At this point I started talking to him. I know, I know….but I think he understood me.
Me: “I can’t believe you just did that, what’s
your deal? Do you really want to go down
this road? Do you want a piece of me?” (I might have yelled that last line, not sure)
Gallo De Diablo: “Baawwkkk….”
(I translated this as “oh, I want a piece of you alright”)
Me: “So, that’s how
it’s gonna be huh?”
Gallo De Diablo: “Baawwkkk….bawk”
(puffs up chest again) (I translated this as “that’s how it gonna be”)
Me: “bring it”
(again, might have yelled this)
At this point Diablo runs at me again. And for some reason, I felt the need to yell
again as I kicked at him (unleashing my ninja skills). I missed, he missed and we both backed off
again. Again we stared at each other (I heard
that music again and thought I saw a tumbleweed blow by) wondering who was
going to make the first move. We slowly
started circling each other; I swear I caught myself flexing my hands at my
hips like there were pistols there.
Me: “all right bud,
if this is how it’s gonna be. One of us
might have to die”
Diablo: “baawwkk, bawwkk….bawkok”
(I translated this as “it’s going to be you, cowboy!”)
Me: “talking crap don’t
get you nowhere, back off or die…your choice”
As we circled I suddenly realized that I was now between
Diablo and the coop, and he was about twenty feet away. It was here that my sanity returned. I had a thought that I would unlatch the gate
(so I could quickly close it) and just let him go in on his own. As I bent down to unlatch the gate prop, out
of the corner of my eye…I see him. He is
coming at me in full charge mode; chest puffed, leaning forward at a dead
run. I quickly stood up; he stopped and
started pecking at the ground like he was just in a hurry to reach that
spot.
Me: “kind of a
coward, aren’t you?”
Diablo: “Baawk,
baawak” (which I translated as, “nothing to see here, resume what you were
doing”)
Me: “I know what you
were trying to do, you back jumping turd”
I stared at him for a moment, wondering how he would taste
with some dumplings. But he’s not mine,
so I bent down again. There he comes
again, same as before. This time I was
ready. Like some grand master cowboy ninja,
I quickly stood up and kicked out a roundhouse kick that would have had made Chuck
Norris proud. There was an explosion of
feathers, as I connected with Diablo’s head.
He flew through the air for a couple of feet and just sorta flopped
around a little when he hit the ground.
For just a second I gleefully thought I had killed him. That didn’t last long, because as I said…he wasn’t
mine.
Then like some scene from a horror movie where you think the
monster is dead and it gets back up out of the ooze, Gallo De Diablo rose up
from the ground. I flashed back to that
little four year old boy for a second, and had a sinking pit in my stomach. But, it seems he’d had enough. He headed further out into the back yard. But now I have another problem, he’s outside
the coop and he needs to be inside the coop.
So I walked away from the coop hoping that he would head back that
way. No chance, it seems he does not
want anything more to do with this cowboy ninja. So I did what any good cowboy would do, I thought
about finding a rope to catch him with.
But alas, the flood had removed any sort of rope or string that might
have been available. So I eased around
him and used my hat, which he was afraid of for some reason, and herded him
toward the coop. He squawked at me the
whole time, but he headed for the coop at a high lope. Once he got inside, he really made some
noise. The whole time he was carrying on,
the hens were making noise too.
Hens: “bawk, bawk,
bawk” (I think this means “Oh Diablo, you’re our hero. You protected us from that awful cowboy. Are you hurt? Do we need to nurse you back to
health?”)
Diablo: “bawk,
baaawwkkk, baawwkok.” (This I translated
as “I only came in here because this is where the ladies are and I wanted to be
with them. You had nothing to do with it
and you just wait till tomorrow, cowboy!
No ladies, I aint hurt, that cowboy couldn’t hurt me if he wanted to”)
Me: “Looking forward
to it, can’t wait to kick you in the head again”
I’m sure I will be closing the coop again tomorrow, hoping I
leave that four year old boy in my past.
Think I’ll take a rope.
