Sunday 20 June 2010

MAXED OUT: Requiem for a Heavyweight

Followers of Reb's blog will know that my adversary Max is now toast. The Peaceable is at peace again.

I feel bad about it, but not as bad as all that. He was literally tearing the feathers from the backs of the hens, leaving then bleeding.

I thought he was just nuts, but the neighbors tell me that is the way Gallos are. The last straw was him trying to peck Reb's trousers off the other day. God knows what would have happened if he had managed it.

In retrospect, a rooster was a bad idea, if you don't want fertilised eggs and then chicks, and we don't. Max was a decent name for him, but Benito would have suited him better. Apart from maiming the girls, he did sod all, except swagger about bawling his wattles off with his chest stuck out like the tin-pot dictator he was, and try to kick divots out of Murphy the cat.

But I will miss him - he had balls, all right. I had to take a broom into the run when fetching the eggs, to keep him at bay. Otherwise I had to kick him from one end of the run to the other, where he would pick himself up, puff out all his feathers, and wade back in for another basinful. Insanely brave. Got to admire it.

Justi, our next-door neighbour, will not miss him a bit. He didn't much care for the 5.30 am bellow of 'Cock-a-Doooooo', audible for a quarter of a mile.

Max never mastered Cock-a Doodle-Doo, but maybe his version was just the Spanish one.

So, basta con cockerels. We are thinking about some new hens. Maybe from Asturia. 'Asturiano, mal Cristiano,' they say. OK with me.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Sorry for your loss. I imagined he would go with a swipe of the chainsaw one day - this sounds a bit more tidy.

Johnnie Walker said...

murderer