This Macho Menace Rules the Roost

Not since junior high had I seen such a raw assertion of male fury.

I’d scoffed when my family told stories at dinner of how this adolescent thug kept them cowering behind closed doors. I shrugged it off when I heard that this urban predator chased my 5-year-old son and his kindergarten pal to the top of our jungle gym and kept them perched there in terror as he taunted and strutted.

I even laughed it off when my wife, Pam, said he had rammed his head under her skirt and ravaged her legs.

But early one morning, when my 7- and 10-year-old daughters ran shrieking into the house, I decided to take a stand.

We hadn’t anticipated this frightening turn of events last spring, when we agreed to accept the fluffy yellow chicks that my daughter’s first-grade class had incubated.

The puffballs blossomed into a striking pair. Both have rich, rusty-orange plumage with black streaks. But while the hen, Henny Penny, is inherently good-natured, the rooster, Chile Pepper, has a hard-wired mean streak. A wild spray of iridescent green tail feathers and a coxcomb that is a sea of bright red cresting waves perfectly match his innate propensity for macho bluster.

That attribute came home to roost quickly. One morning, Pam answered a knock on the door of our house, which sits on a hill within sight of Downtown Los Angeles.

“This is not a social call,” our neighbor said.

Pam suspected as much. For one thing, it was not yet 7. For another, this usually sweet woman’s eyes were spinning in her head like flaming pinwheels.

Other neighbors had told us that they enjoyed the rooster’s nascent crowing. They said it reminded them of the country; that it was something of an antidote to the sirens and gunshots that usually trouble our deepest sleep here in L.A.

That night, in a bold guerrilla action, the children caught the hen and cock as they roosted and stuck them in the cage they’d been avoiding since adolescence. “Now what?” we wondered. Someone pointed out that the cage fit neatly into Pam’s new sideboard. In a moment of desperation, the kids shoved in the cage and shut the doors.

The bird went off at 6 the next morning. Er-er-ERRR-rrr, Er-er-ERRRRR-rrr.

Our house rattled as it had on Jan. 17. But the neighbor didn’t complain.

*

Chile, however, was hardly cowed by his nocturnal incarceration. His reign of terror continued. A few mornings later, I committed to the showdown. The time was ripe, I decided, to teach the kids something about facing fears.

Bullies--physical, psychological, spiritual, political--are contemptuous of weakness, I told them. Back a bully down quickly, and peace prevails. Show fear or indecision and he’ll push in and take your soul.

The rooster had decided that our back yard was his turf, I mumbled as I marched toward the back door. Was that a reasonable conclusion? No. Did it show extraordinary disrespect for me and my family, who wanted only to live in harmony? Yes!

“I’ll show that bird who’s boss,” I said, startled that a John Wayne, Col. Sanders-like twang had crept into my voice.

Pam and the kids eased out behind me and stood by the screen door.

The rooster glimpsed me and went into ritualistic battle preparations. He raked his yellow talons through the lawn. He huffed out the feathers on his neck.

Inexplicably, my pulse kicked into high gear. I crouched, trying to seem casual.

The rooster scuttled sideways, edging closer, until I was looking straight into his hard little eyes. In the fiery glow of those black-and-yellow disks I saw a dozen junior high bullies and barroom brawlers: Eyes reckless drunk on pure testosterone; eyes fearless with rage and adrenaline.

“Listen, rooster,” I snarled. At which he charged.

In a single startled motion, I rocketed to my feet and punted, sending that fat, feathery football eight feet down our steeply sloping lawn.

Hyperventilating, I turned to my family. They stared at me with a collective, pitying look that is impossible to describe or to forget.

It was a you just kicked a chicken look.

More precisely, it was a the day is just starting and you’ve already subjected your family to the humiliating sight of their demented father, in his pajamas, trying to prove his masculinity by kicking a helpless family pet who is now emotionally scarred for life look.

The rooster, in fact, wasn’t hurt.

*

In the following weeks, he continued to grow. Our back yard has come to resemble a small Jurassic Park. Anyone who ventures in is stalked and then shredded by a bird the size of an ostrich and as ferocious as any velociraptor.

Pam spoke to some friends in the neighborhood who also have roosters. They told her that for a time, in hopes that the cocks would not notice them, they put paper bags on their heads whenever they went out to garden. Now they never venture into their yard without swathing their legs in cardboard armor.

I was embarrassed for them. I was embarrassed for us for having such friends (although they were the only ones who empathized with our big fear--that dinner guests might investigate our dining room’s clucking sideboard.)

Rather than similarly sacrifice my dignity, I decided to put my knowledge of evolutionary psychology to work. My kids have a red plastic devil’s pitchfork, a leftover from Halloweens past. Figuring that Chile needed to know this household’s true pecking order, I held the fork over my head like a coxcomb and strutted around the yard like a cocksure, combative rooster.

Chile was too bewildered to attack. But as soon as I left, he was back assaulting squirrels, doves, sparrows, cats and kids--then crowing defiantly.

Another brainstorm: I grabbed my old trumpet and stepped cautiously into the yard. The rooster spotted me. His eyes gleamed insanely. He dug and postured, edging sideways, puffing his wings. When he lunged, I let loose: Bleeh-blee-BLEEH-bleh, I trumpeted, aiming the sound right at his rage-filled, pea-sized, brain.

Chile backed away in bewilderment. But the effect didn’t last.

In the evenings now, I watch him through our kitchen window, his yellow eyes burning with blood lust, daring me to step outside.

Please don’t take this as a modern fable. It is simply a sad story. A story without resolution. A story of one man and a chicken.