It's Up to the Birds

My morning begins around 2:00 am.  Not that I want to start waking up that early, but I don't have much choice when the roosters outside my bedroom window start their crowing.

I have this neighbor directly behind my bedroom window who raises chickens for cock fighting.  Cock fighting itself is a cruel and disgusting past time I can hardly believe is legal, but where I live, it is.  Anyway, he has several roosters that seem to never really quit crowing.

Growing up on a farm, we had roosters that would crow all hours day and night as well.  However, they were down at the barn, many, many yards below the house, and not right outside my bedroom window.  Typically I love chickens.  I've raised them for numerous years and always enjoy hatching them from eggs, playing with them, holding them, even snuggling them.  Now I'm getting a bit sick of the crowing.

Since I lie in bed, trying to ignore the crowing, trying to fall back asleep, you know my mind keeps coming back to those crowing roosters.  I can now distinguish about 8 different roosters from each other by the sound of their crows.  There is a young one who hasn't quite got the crowing down yet and sounds more like a dying full frog than a rooster.  There is the "Speedy Gonzalez  rooster who belts out his crow like there is a contest to see who can do it the fastest.  Then there is the "Repeater".  Whenever anyone crows, he has to crow his two cents in, always having the last word as soon as another one starts his crow.  One rooster has a very distinguished crowing.  It is long and drawn out, deep in tone and full of testerone.  It reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger, big, muscled, full of himself, and the rooster of all roosters.  Ha!

I don't know quite what the neighbor was doing to his roosters earlier this afternoon, but when they normally are resting, the things were squawking and going on like there was no tomorrow.  They are so stirred up, it sounds like the early morning crowing, when they are at their best.  Or worst, depending on how you look at it.

Peace and quiet?  Not with the birds who live behind my house!