I Heard the Rooster Call My Name
I finally saw him.
The Rooster. I only have two mornings a week I can actually hunt but today at about 7:15 I caught up with him. I was doing the dog-walk and before we even got to the walk-over bridge at the end of the street I could hear him beckoning from the other side of the river. When we got across the bridge, I could tell he was somewhere to the left. But with the way sound travels and the big empty space that is the Forks of the Thames, I couldn't even be sure if he was on this side of the river. He could have been over where the old Dutch Laundry used to be.
So we headed off along the river bank towards the Art Gallery, and heard him again - back towards the foot-bridge. We doubled back and narrowed it down to somewhere near the Cinderella bridge.
And then we heard him do it again. And standing on the bike path actually SAW the guy. He was up in a tree along the sloping bank of the Thames. He was roosting up there. That's what they do - roost. Hence the name 'rooster.'
But from where he was sitting and I was standing on the bike-path, he was about eye-level to me. We actually made eye contact. Nice looking bird. Kinda scrawny. But that's probably to be expected, what with having to eat bugs and stuff instead of corn after some dumb hick dumped him off at the edge of downtown in the middle of the city two months ago.
Then again, roosters always look kind of scrawny. Probably from having nothing else to do in life but wake people up at the crack of dawn and bang multiple-partner hens all day long.
He wasn't terribly big. Black with lots of white feathers around his shoulders or whatever birds have where their body meets the head. The head wasn't too big and it was too dark out to tell if he had one of those red plume things on the top of his head like you see on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box.
Certainly not a shy animal. Looked right at me and the dog - a BIG dog (he's a Great Dane, you know,) and even though we were only a few feet away, he extended that neck, threw back his head and gave a full-throated "Cock-a-doodle-doo."
It was pretty exciting. Not unlike when I saw that deer on the bike path near Wellington across the river from Victoria Hospital this summer. So we watched him do his thing a couple more times and then got bored and came home.
Today I buy some film and tomorrow morning go hunting with my camera.
But I'm a bit worried about the rooster. It was 5 degrees C out there this morning. What's going to happen to him when it gets colder? I know that birds are cold-blooded like their relatives, the reptiles and dinosaurs but still, it gets mighty cold come November. And it's not like he can fly south for the winter or warm up in a nearby hen-house.
Still, I love the idea of the rooster living here. It says everything you need to know about this town. London likes to think of itself as a 'Big' City. But really it's soooo Small Town and Hicksville in just about every way. And a barnyard rooster living on the very edge of our great downtown is a perfect symbol of that.
I grew up on 'Huckleberry Hound' and 'Yogi Bear' and 'Quick-Draw McGraw' cartoons. All brought to us by the good people at Kelloggs Corn Flakes. And now I know what they meant by their slogan - "The best to you each morning."
The Rooster. I only have two mornings a week I can actually hunt but today at about 7:15 I caught up with him. I was doing the dog-walk and before we even got to the walk-over bridge at the end of the street I could hear him beckoning from the other side of the river. When we got across the bridge, I could tell he was somewhere to the left. But with the way sound travels and the big empty space that is the Forks of the Thames, I couldn't even be sure if he was on this side of the river. He could have been over where the old Dutch Laundry used to be.
So we headed off along the river bank towards the Art Gallery, and heard him again - back towards the foot-bridge. We doubled back and narrowed it down to somewhere near the Cinderella bridge.
And then we heard him do it again. And standing on the bike path actually SAW the guy. He was up in a tree along the sloping bank of the Thames. He was roosting up there. That's what they do - roost. Hence the name 'rooster.'
But from where he was sitting and I was standing on the bike-path, he was about eye-level to me. We actually made eye contact. Nice looking bird. Kinda scrawny. But that's probably to be expected, what with having to eat bugs and stuff instead of corn after some dumb hick dumped him off at the edge of downtown in the middle of the city two months ago.
Then again, roosters always look kind of scrawny. Probably from having nothing else to do in life but wake people up at the crack of dawn and bang multiple-partner hens all day long.
He wasn't terribly big. Black with lots of white feathers around his shoulders or whatever birds have where their body meets the head. The head wasn't too big and it was too dark out to tell if he had one of those red plume things on the top of his head like you see on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box.
Certainly not a shy animal. Looked right at me and the dog - a BIG dog (he's a Great Dane, you know,) and even though we were only a few feet away, he extended that neck, threw back his head and gave a full-throated "Cock-a-doodle-doo."
It was pretty exciting. Not unlike when I saw that deer on the bike path near Wellington across the river from Victoria Hospital this summer. So we watched him do his thing a couple more times and then got bored and came home.
Today I buy some film and tomorrow morning go hunting with my camera.
But I'm a bit worried about the rooster. It was 5 degrees C out there this morning. What's going to happen to him when it gets colder? I know that birds are cold-blooded like their relatives, the reptiles and dinosaurs but still, it gets mighty cold come November. And it's not like he can fly south for the winter or warm up in a nearby hen-house.
Still, I love the idea of the rooster living here. It says everything you need to know about this town. London likes to think of itself as a 'Big' City. But really it's soooo Small Town and Hicksville in just about every way. And a barnyard rooster living on the very edge of our great downtown is a perfect symbol of that.
I grew up on 'Huckleberry Hound' and 'Yogi Bear' and 'Quick-Draw McGraw' cartoons. All brought to us by the good people at Kelloggs Corn Flakes. And now I know what they meant by their slogan - "The best to you each morning."
posted by Sonny Drysdale at 4:40 AM
4 Comments:
Sonny, if you can snap of picture of that rangy rooster, there's $25 in it for ya from The Daily Planet.
P.S. The poor bird's likely starving. Time for the neighbourhood to lay down some bird chow.
Honey Pot, Betty's going to Denver, Colorado, for a week. Come out to the farm and bring your jammies.
Butch, I went down there afterwards with my camera and saw the guy but he skedaddled away along the banks.
BUT at the base of the tree I saw him roosting in this morn, someone had put down a bowl with birdseed in it for the guy.
Poor thing.
I go walking down there sometimes, but I've yet to spy the rooster. I hope he doesn't just 'disappear' that the lamented Riverside Turkey. I miss that guy.
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