Handsome!

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In our rambling yesterday, we were going right slow along the road when I spotted this rooster and another one in a fenced-in area of someone's yard. I couldn't resist a shot of him. Isn't he the handsome one? I don't know what it is, but I like chickens, and think roosters are just so handsome. Not cute, but handsome or beautiful. And colorful! Black, white, red, orange, etc or a combination. One I seen at the fair was this deep, deep auburn red.

They also bring back good memories. When Roger and I moved to Tennessee when we were young, my best friend/sister-in-law's dad gave us our own chickens. We kept them in a pen for a while, then let them have the run of the place. We always slept a little late on the weekends, and there was always this one little white hen that would go strolling by our bedroom window singing. I have no other word for it.

Also at the little place we rented, there were these little snakes about a foot long....one chicken would catch one and then all the other chickens would try to catch that chicken because they wanted to kill the snake. Roger thought it hilarious. There would go the chicken with the snake and a whole line of other chickens chasing her.

Of course, the thing we still laugh about is the rooster. One time Roger and one of my brothers were out in the front yard after work one evening practicing with their bows and arrows. Not sure how to explain it, but our little house set right against a big ridge...hill, or some might even call it a mountain. So they had bales of hay to have their target on, but if the arrow went through the bales of hay, there was the hillside right there to catch it.

Well, up the side of it were some younger trees...I cannot remember what kind. But they were not huge...and after we let the chickens run free, they started roosting in those trees. Well, while Roger and Robert were shooting their bows and arrows, the chickens were trying to get situated in the trees. It was that time of day where it is just a few minutes before dark takes over.

I didn't see this, nor hear the beginnings of it, but I heard the end Cock-a Doodle-Doooo and I heard Roger and Robert laughing so ran outside to see what was going on. The hens had all settled in those trees, and the rooster was trying to get situated and Roger said you could hear him flopping all around up there and disturbing the others, making them squawk. And in a second or two, he came falling out of the tree, rolled down the hill, and jumped up and crowed!

Roger still laughs about this, and it is funnier still to hear and see him tell it. I told Neal about it one night and he said he woke up that night after going to bed and started laughing about it. i am sitting here smiling just remembering it...and if Roger came and went through his routine about it, I would be laughing out loud.