Sometimes it's not about politics, social issues or saving the world. Sometimes we just need an inspiring story, like that of Bruce the chook, writes Rosemary Sorensen.
THE BOYS are crowing.
There are 15 of them, bantam roosters living the good life after being “rescued” from a shed where they’d been left to fend for themselves when someone did a runner.
Yes, 15 roosters do wake you up in the morning and, indeed, in the middle of the night, when a couple of them decide the moon is dawn, and shout at it for a few minutes.
No, they don’t fight among themselves, at least not too much. What they do is sidle up to each other, stamp their spurred feet, fluff their neck feathers, then sheepishly (or roosterishly) kind of look away and sidle off.
There’s also this thing they do which does draw a bit of blood, if they get a good hold on the comb of an unsuspecting brother, having snuck up behind and then lunged. The surprised chook lets out a blood-curdling squawk, a flurry of feathers ensues, then it’s over.
Fifteen of the buggers. Seven fluffy white ones, with rich red combs and punk feathers off the back of their heads. Five beautifully mottled brown, grey and cream ones, who often take the top rung of the pecking order. A gorgeous golden boy, who appeared, early on, to be bottom of the pecking order and who does need to be favoured with some extra lettuce. And two dark grey, almost black ones, both of whom are called Bruce.
One Bruce has a floppy comb, the shape preferred by the comb-grabbers because you can get a really good beakful and hold on for seconds.
The other Bruce has a knobbly comb and it’s this Bruce who was on his last legs just a few days ago. So weak I could pick him up, which was why I thought he’d gone beyond the point of no return.
You can do your own metaphor-ising here, about pecking orders, about compassion, about practical intervention to assist the weak and vulnerable. About the nature of animals, how each individual, even in a flock of roosters, has a personality. And how, being among a flock and watching the small moments of interaction, their funny ways, is both wonderfully entertaining and constantly surprising.
You can do that if you so choose. I’m going to stick to the story of the near-dead chook.
So, Bruce is a particularly feisty chook. He comes up to your feet, turns his ugly little head and stares up at you with one beady eye. You don’t pat roosters — these ones at least. But they do like to walk over your feet and brush up against your leg, just to let you know you’ll never be “flock”, per se, but you’re flock-adjacent.
This particular morning, doing my usual headcount, I only got to 14. This is not unusual, because counting chooks is a skill. They move about, for starters, and there’s an under-the-coop space that attracts them.
Early on, about six months ago, when they first arrived from Edgar’s Mission (a brilliant organisation in Lancefield, just north of Melbourne that rescues farm animals), I tried letting them out of the fox-proof, wired pen, which is very spacious, but nevertheless is a cage. They shot off in all directions for a while, but the screech of a cockatoo or the shadow of an eagle overhead saw them sensibly scuttle in that funny waddling gait back through the pen door. Gradually, they decided in is where they want to be. Occasionally, one or two go about a metre outside the open door, peck around a bit, then stroll back in.
So, I got used to doing the headcount and it’s a way of checking to see if there are any problems in the flock. Bruce, with his knobbly comb, is, I confess, a bit of a favourite, so his absence was easy to identify. The evening before, he’d looked a bit peaky, and one or two of the others had been aggressive towards him, keeping him away from seed and the rice they liked late afternoon, so his non-appearance was not a good sign.
Down on my stomach, peering under the coop, there he was, ensconced in a corner I could just reach by a bit of board-lifting. When I picked him up, he was shockingly light. Amazing how quickly a rooster can lose weight and condition. And when I set him on his feet out in the yard, he wobbled and collapsed.
Only chookish readers will want to know the details of my prognosis here and I’ve probably already pushed my luck way beyond the attention span of normal people. Suffice to say, his eyes were bright and his slump wasn’t that of a dying chook. So, I tried him on cat food and he pecked away, missing the mark occasionally, which was a worry, but he persisted.
At this stage, he was isolated in a part of the enclosure that kept the others from going him. When he stumbled over to the gate to see what the flock was up to, one of the white boys went up and gave his crop a sharp peck, from which you might deduce that flock behaviour weeds out the weak.
A day and several cat food cans later, he was up and about. I left the small enclosure gate open and he hopped over the rim and joined the rest. He seems fully recovered, at least for now.
There’s no punchline to this. No little moral for the fable of the sick chook. And, frankly, a sick chook is usually a goner, although there are a whole range of parasites that can afflict chooks, fixed with medicines (or Vasoline smeared on the scaly mites on their feet).
I just wanted to share with you the happy little story of Bruce’s recovery. It’ll be temporary, no doubt, but while not quite Lazarus-like, it was quite a spectacular turnaround.
Where’s there’s life...
Rosemary Sorensen is an IA columnist, journalist and founder of the Bendigo Writers Festival.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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