An eerie silence greeted me as I opened my bathroom door, stepped inside, and looked at the window facing the yard.  I had just woken up. This, the first morning without a rooster in my daily life.

I heard nothing from outside. It was a pleasure. How long have I missed the beauty of stillness in the morning? How long had my neighbors put up with him every time they opened a window, only to hear the stillness broken by the cracking of the rooster’s crow? Over and over again. (See  rooster-racks-up-pain)

I am heartily sorry for having imposed such an imposition on you. Thank you for your forbearance.

Yes. Sombitch Rooster is gone. I no longer fear walking in my yard, not knowing if the fowl one was hiding, wait to launch an assault, to attack with the spurs, his “weapons of mass destruction.” (See fowl-locked-up-after-a-bash) The smaller birds no longer fear a pecking from the king of the patio. Perhaps now they can get over their trauma — of always being “pecked” on by a bully of sorts. (I wonder. Could they get PTSD?)

————

I started to miss the verbal exchange I had with him. I came home after dropping Sombitch Rooster off yesterday (see truth-aint-easy) and was ascending the steps to my Conshohocken, PA, house, when I felt the urge to whistle. It’s a whistle I save for alerting my son and displaying my small talent at a baseball stadium (The Phillies scored six runs in the bottom of the ninth to tie Cincinnati, and went on to win it in the 10th inning last night.)

I wanted to whistle because it created such an internal response in the rooster. He would cackle! Like I had tickled him, and he couldn’t hold back a guffaw. My son and I would get such a kick out of it. “C’mon, Dad, whistle again when he’s not looking,” Nicholas would say with a smile, waiting for the inevitable, involuntary response.

I’d put my lips together, pucker up, and blow. (You do know how to whistle, don’t you?) “Google-li-gawk,” the rooster would reply, or cackle something along those lines. It would come from within, somewhere in his chest. A really cool response! Yeah, I’ll miss. him. Miss him already. But, the hard caked scabs over my nostril and ear lobe where he attacked dampen any sad feelings I might have had in kicking him out. (See, “keep an eye out for mean roosters.”)

Oh, I almost forgot. My cat, Sundance, went into the back yard without looking both ways for any oncoming train of a rooster at the doorway. Could the animal, whose yard the rooster had taken over the past long year, sense the bird’s disappearance? Did all the animals this side of Philadelphia throw a celebration party last night? “Ding, dong . . . the wicked rooster’s gone . . .“

Let me squeeze in and sing along with you, my little Munchkin friends. We did it without swinging the tin man’s ax or waving the Good Witch’s magic wand. Just used a smidgen of the lion’s courage and the straw man’s brains. It’s safe back home again, Dorothy. I just hope there’s no roosters in Kansas. Mean ones, I mean. No mean ones.