Boy, that brings back memories. Back in the dark ages when I was a little tyke, my granddad had chickens and the inevitable rooster in the back yard.
That damn rooster hated me with a passion.
Every time I was near the back yard, the damn thing would be after me. On the frequent occasions when the rooster caught up with me, my granddad would inevitably claim that I had provoked the rooster.
That is, until "The Day".
As usual, the rooster was trying to inflict bodily harm on me and I was running for my life. In its frenzy, the rooster made the mistake of going after my granddad, spurring him and drawing blood. I had never heard my granddad swear before. He had an absolute mastery of profanity. He was a Grand Master of swearing. I knew what most of the words meant, but I had never heard them assembled quite so creatively. The big kids at my school apparently had a LOT to learn about the subject.
He went after the rooster barehanded, but the rooster immediately made for a high perch in the lone oak tree in the back yard. Two minutes of continuous cursing later, my granddad appeared on the back porch, armed with a twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun. Talk about overkill. He let the rooster have it with both barrels. I have that shotgun now and it has a rock-hard maple stock. I have fired both barrels simultaneously only once, a mistake I don't intend to repeat.
I don't know if my granddad used buckshot, but not much of that rooster made it to the ground. What looked like three roosters worth of feathers and various unidentified pieces of rooster parts covered the yard under that tree.
My granddad raked up what was left of the rooster, put it in the trash, sat down on the front porch and went back to reading the paper like nothing had happened. My grandmother and parents had to know the rooster was missing, but nobody ever asked me or dared broach the subject with my granddad. I certainly didn't volunteer anything. |
