Django Returns
July 1st, 2013 · No Comments · Posted in farming
This handsome fellow plays hard to get
In Chapter I, our hero rooster, Django, bolted from his temporary cage like a shot out of a gun and made through the tall grass like his tail feathers were on fire. He made an awful commotion, but after a minute or so he was completely silent and we lost sight of him. We feared he might be headed for the next county.
Further silence the next morning–when we hoped to hear him crowing his head off–fueled suspicions that he had fled the scene for good. I began wondering if I could have done something different to induce him to make friends with our 30 Rhode Island Red pullets. Maybe after fetching him from his previous home I could have placed him and his carrier inside the coop with the juvenile hens. Perhaps he would have bonded with them a little overnight. Instead, I had stashed him in the goat shed. When we opened the door to the carrier–pointing him, in effect, toward our brood of juvenile hens–his reaction was to get the hell out of there.
Then around 7:30 a.m. that following morning Django let loose with a might crow. And another. And another. To our great relief, he announced that he was back, but on his own terms. He spent that day scoping out the territory, walking around the house, around the fields, around the new garden, around the sheep, but never getting close to the coop and the hens.
Somehow, he managed to get inside the sheep fencing. Our seven ewes generally ignored him, or stopped their noshing just long enough to stare at him for a while. But then Django got a little too cocky. He approached the sheep boldly. They all lifted their heads, stood rigidly at attention, then charged. Django found himself cornered and had no choice but to launch himself head-first at the electrified netting. Miraculously, he squeezed through, landing in an empty paddock on the other side.
That’s where brother-in-law Tom and I left Django when we headed out for a dinner date Saturday evening. It was our first test of whether the pullets would find their way back into the coop after darkness fell. We hoped Django would join them. After all, the previous owner, a man named Skip, had assured me “he will sense the hens.” But when we arrived home well past 9:30, Django again was nowhere to be seen. Most of the pullets were huddled inside the coop.
Yesterday, Django spent most of the day nestled under a lilac bush outside the kitchen window. Then he discovered our pickup truck parked around the other side of the house and it is there–up in the under-carriage of the truck–that he has been roosting at night. This morning his crowing started a little earlier–around six–a sign, perhaps, that his confidence is returning. Now we have to shoe him away from the truck when we want to drive into town. We don’t want Django to end up at the Cambridge post office.
My sister has suggested moving the coop with the hens from its spot outside the basement door closer to the truck where Django likes to hang out. At first I resisted: Why should we have to re-arrange our world to suit a stubborn rooster? But now this plan is beginning to make sense. But it means driving the truck through tall, wet grass (it’s still raining every day) to hitch it to the coop. We will have to ponder this move.
Stay tuned….
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