Roosters do not crow at dawn, that’s only in children’s books and cartoons.
They crow whenever their feathery little brain feels the urge to pierce your ears with their unbearable shrieks. They crow at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., noon, even at sunset.
They never read a children’s book so they have no idea they are supposed to only cackle at dawn. Their hour of choice around my neighborhood is 3 in the morning when the palm trees are perfectly still.
I was sleeping on a night like this when suddenly a shriek from hell screeched 20 feet away from the neighbor’s yard. My eyes popped open, my teeth were gnashing.
The raving rooster kept up his torturous cocka-doodling over and over until I was going stark raving mad, and then he stopped. Ahh, blessed silence, but this is all in his evil plan. He lulls you into peacefulness and just when you are falling back to sleep, it’s cocka-doodle-do louder than before.
If the devil had a pet, it would be a rooster. They are his evil messengers on Earth.
I heard they use roosters in the military as a torture device, it’s call it “Roostering.” It’s how they found Bin Laden. They captured a Pakistani man and made him sleep 3 feet away from one, and after two nights, he spilled his guts.
OK, I’m kidding, even the military is not this harsh.
Everyone hates roosters except local residents, this is because they can’t hear them. They are deaf to any loud crowing at night, it’s in their genes.
But reading recently about the Hawaii Police Department officers being overrun by roosters at their Kona station made me reflect on my rooster tales.
I once had a next-door neighbor in Puna with a rooster that perched outside his window and crowed into his bedroom every night at, you guessed it, 3 in the morning. The screeching of that horrible bird had to be 95 decibels, equal to a 747 taking off, blaring right in his window. He never heard a thing.
How do I know this? The next morning I confronted this neighbor, telling him that his rooster woke us up and would he please do something about it. He said, “Da roostah no boddah us, so wats your problem?” I had no answer to that.
Anyway, remember the feathery culprit who woke me up at night? I vowed to shut him up for good. I called the cops, the humane society, the county, no one was interested in taking out a rooster. It was all up to me.
I went down and rented a big wire trap and filled it with every morsel delectable to a strutting cock, he just laughed. I found a fish net and tried to throw it over him, not even close. I got a long pole with a net at the end, he always escaped.
He kept thumbing his beak at us, keeping us awake for a month. Then it came to me, I’ll bet the neighbor’s are going nuts, too. The next morning I went around with a petition, asking my neighbors to write down comments on the rooster.
They sounded off.
The comments ranged from threatening to have the neighbor who was harboring the feathery fugitive arrested to all kinds of other nasty things. I gave the petition to the neighbor with the rooster. Not a peep was ever heard again.
But the saga continues.
The Palisades is now plagued with another feathered fiend, only this one is mobile. He’s a drifter, spreading his cock-a doodle-dos up and down the street.
He will be impossible to catch, except, I can only hope, for a fast car.
Dennis Gregory is a writer, artist, singer, teacher and Kailua-Kona resident who mixes truth, humor and aloha in his biweekly column. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com.