“I want to kill those roosters!” is the phrase that inevitably escapes the mouth of every long-term visitor to Love & Hope.
Movies and cartoons depict roosters crowing in the morning, in sync with the dawning of the sun.
FALSE.
The truth is roosters crow whenever they darn well feel like it, but especially between the hours of 10:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m.-7:00 a.m.
The roosters we used to gripe about were a couple hundred yards up the road. While walking to La Puerta del Diablo we’d see them in our neighbor’s yard and think I wish I could get my hands on that rooster. I’d like to wring its neck!
In October we were given twenty-two chicks, meant to grow up into egg-producing hens and housed in a coop on the yard’s first terrace below the office windows. We were so excited. The chicks were cute, the kids loved them and all seemed right with the world.
Fast-forward to January: our used-to-be-adorable chicks grew up and half of them turned into loud, noisy, annoying roosters that crow and crow and crow and crow.
But as awful as the crowing is, it’s also rather humorous. Every morning, our roosters have a competition with the roosters up the road. The neighbor’s rooster “cock-a-doodle-doo!”, there’s a five second pause and then two of our roosters will simultaneously return the call “cock-a-doodle-doo!”, followed by another five second pause and the rooster up the road responds with another crow, starting the cycle all over again.
Our chickens and roosters are also professional escape artists. We built up the fencing around the chicken coop so they have room to wander outside, but don’t have access to the entire back yard. Despite these precautions, we wake up every morning to find chickens and roosters outside the fencing, prancing around the terraces and steps, creeping dangerously close to the missionary rooms. And then a missionary or a few kids will run around flailing their arms, yelling and chasing our fowl back into their pen.
Here comes the point where vegetarians and anyone with a weak stomach should stop reading.
Over the past two weeks, because of coop overcrowding and because we decided we had one (or ten) too many roosters, we’ve been living out the fantasies of every visitor, volunteer and missionary who has silently cursed the roosters for denying them precious hours of sleep. We woke up one morning to find the tias and cook doing this:
Goodbye sleepless mornings – hello dinner!
On the menu that day: sopa de pollo (chicken soup) and pollo a la plancha (grilled chicken).
It was delicious. 🙂