April29
What a bizarre night we had last night!
We had friends over for dinner because Bethany just finished the last of her classwork for her master’s degree (congrats, Beth!). We were just about to sit down to eat when I remembered I had to take a phone number over to my neighbors’ house. I ran it over, and in the process heard a story about how Deb and Jim ended up with a rooster. A real, live, crowing rooster. Their daughter had, she thought thoughtfully, brought her mother a rooster for an early Mother’s Day gift. Because she’d always wanted one. We had a good laugh about what an odd gift it was, and at Deb – what was she gonna do with a rooster? (Besides, of course, name it “Dumplin”)
After dinner, I went upstairs to take a call (didn’t want to talk while friends were watching TV) from the Ridgeback Rescue (and, sadly, the dog we were hoping to adopt has been adopted). We’d finished running through her form questions and were just chatting when I went over to the window and looked out over the front yard. And there, in the street just in front of my house, was a rooster! It was running for all it was worth.
I told the lady I had to go catch a rooster (she laughed) and hung up really quickly. Ran down the stairs and over to the neighbors’. They were eating dinner and watching TV – didn’t know their rooster was on the lam. So, they threw coats and shoes on and Deb ran out the door with me. We looked silly, I’m sure, as we waved our arms and corralled the rooster between our houses up against our privacy fences. Jim stood on his porch laughing, and when Deb asked [shrieked] for help, he said, “It’s YOUR rooster!” She finally got Dumplin’ backed into a corner. The stupid rooster stuck his head in the fence and got stuck, butt out.
Deb yells to Jim, “What do I do?”
Jim yells back, “Grab it by the neck.”
“I can’t see its neck!”
“Grab it by the ass and drag it out, THEN grab its neck!”
“I don’t want to get pecked!”
She eventually gets ahold of the animal, then turns frantically back to Jim.
“What now?”
“Toss the damn thing over the fence!”
So she chucks the rooster over the 6-foot privacy fence and it clucks off into their yard. We all look at one another and burst out laughing. We make some jokes about how Dumplin’s gonna end up (as a dumplin?) and about how their daughter didn’t seem to know what she was talking about when she said that the rooster wouldn’t leave the yard if they put down corn for it to eat. After some good laughs, we all say goodnight and I head back in to hang with the company.
I told David et al about the rooster chase, and they laughed, saying they’d heard it for a few minutes before I came down the stairs to chase it. I asked why someone didn’t bother to tell the neighbors and David says, “I don’t know. They let their dog run around…”
I shook my head, and started to say something about why he should have said something to the neighbors. And then I heard clucking. Coming from the front of my house.
So I took off my socks (didn’t want to get them wet in the wet grass) and ran back over to Jim and Deb’s. Only this time, they’re in the backyard trying to figure out how the bird got out the first time. I knock and no one hears. Finally, desperate because the rooster’s running down the street really fast, I yell, “Jim! Deb!”
They come running out of their house, and so do some of our neighbors. And my company. Deb gives me a big bouquet of lilacs, then takes off down the street. I stood there for a few seconds wondering why and what to do with them, then laid them down and joined the chase. And a chase it WAS. Bethany and Deb were waving their hands and running it back toward the house when a car pulls up wanting to pass them on the street. The driver sees what’s going on and helpfully shouts, “Run straight at it!” So, we all do and the bird panics.
All this time, David has been trying to put together the crate we borrowed from Denise and were going to give back to her. He finally gets it together and we corner the rooster – but no one really wants to get pecked and he’s looking mean. The neighbor from across the street, who has usually had a few drinks, and takes much pride in his homosexuality and plays up stereotypes (lisps, hand-waving, strutting, “girlfriend!”ing, calls himself “Miss Ricky”), waltzes over. After seeing the hysteria and the bird jumping like mad trying to get up onto our porch and away from everyone, he walks straight up to the rooster and slaps it. It falls in a daze and he grabs it and tosses it into the crate, singing to himself, “Fag saves the day! Fag saves the day!”
After MUCH hilarity, joking, prancing (on the part of Miss Ricky), crooning to the rooster (Deb was trying to calm him down by talking to him through the crate), we all said goodnight for the last time and went into our houses.
It was so hysterically funny – we laughed so very hard. My stomach hurts today. =)
!
