Rooster Tales

Our nextdoor neighbor, a man whose house I can just see through the thick greenery between us some hundred or so yards away, has recently added a rooster to his menangerie. Prior to the addition of this manical sleep usurper, the only unwanted noises emanating from that direction were barking dogs and crying children and these were mostly relegated to daylight hours. More welcoming sounds that drift our way from there are those of the same children laughing and the mad cackles of a parrot that our neighbor brings out to his porch on weekend mornings. Both of these quiet interrupters manage to induce our smiles. It's not so with the rooster.

I've never actually seen the foul fowl. His predawn screeches are akin to a ghostly rattling of chains and things that go bump in the night. They're eerie and don't seem to come from any particular spot. I can picture this bad bird strutting around the haunted hen house scaring the... eggs out of his frightened flock. Forget cockadoodledoo. Like too many Spanish speakers, this feathered fiend swallows his vowels and what hits the airways is a screeching oooaaaaooooeloooooh; the last part trailing off like a scream dying on the wind. It's a sound that will wake you and wake us it has, somewhere around four thirty or five in the morning for the better part of the last two weeks. Dawn, I would point out to the bird if I spoke chicken, is over an hour later. But of course you can get used to anything if you hear it long enough. That scratching in the walls isn't really rats, it's just loose insulation flapping on a draft. Those footsteps on the roof are just the wind playing with the tiles. GI's, I'm told, even learn to sleep through shellings. And so, though I never quite snoozed through, I did get to the point where I could access some small consciousness, note the soft breathing of the soft woman beside me and the fussy noises of the dog at my feet and await the morning howl. When it was complete, I'd return to serious sleep.

This morning, wouldn't you know it, there was no howl. Did the bird sleep in? Cat get his tongue? Laryingitis? Or did my neighbor dine on fried roster anoche? Whatever the case, I lay abed listening for the sound that never came. More lost sleep. Fortunately, when you're a jubilado, sleep is found as easily as it's lost. There is always an insurance meeting going on somewhere. But what to do tomorrow morning? Expect the racket and lie awake listening or don't expect it and be startled from a dream. What to do, what to do?

And you think you've got problems.