Rooster Tales

As I've shared before we lost two of our roosters over the past few months.  I woke up on Tuesday morning to find that something got the remaining three.  I'm pretty sure it was coyotes because for all three of them to get killed at once meant it was probably more than one "something."   As annoying as they were, they will be missed.  I had always planned on writing a children's book about them but never got very far with it.

I thought I'd share the beginnings of  the story I was writing about them.  I'm warning you; it's very rough around the edges. :-)

Rooster Tales

On a country road, at the edge of a forest and next to a little white church lived five handsome roosters.  Their names were Brewster, Malcolm, Soar, Falcon, and Adventure.   These five brothers spent their days running through the woods, roaming the fields and basically making a nuisance of themselves

The brothers looked exactly alike, except for the color of their legs.  Brewster had grey legs, Falcon had olive green legs, Malcolm had golden legs, Soar had white legs and Adventure had tan legs.  They were black and white with long, flowing tail feathers that were a bluish black color.  The brothers were extremely proud of their tails and strutted throughout the property all day long, crowing loudly, and fluffing out their feathers. 

Malcolm was the leader of the flock.  He was the first one out of the coop each morning and the last one in at night.  He stood guard over his brothers throughout the day.  Every so often, the others would challenge him because they wanted to try and be the new leader.  However, Malcolm would quickly put them in their place.  Malcolm’s neck feathers would fluff up and he would prance around the challenger with one wing outspread, pushing them back into their proper place, which was always behind him!

The smallest and weakest of the brothers, Adventure, was teased constantly.  The others never let him get the choicest morsels or come close to them when they were eating.  Adventure was the only one with brown feathers across his back.  This little difference made him the target of his brothers.  Often they would pull out his tail feathers just for fun.  Adventure also had the sweetest personality of the five brothers.  He would let his owners pick him up and stroke his soft feathers.  He never pecked them or growled at them or chased them.

The brothers envisioned themselves as mighty and fierce hunters, fighting off dangerous foxes and vicious raccoons.  Every day was an adventure and in their minds they waged battle with everything they met.  All day long they strutted through the woods, crowing constantly to let everyone know what terrible fowl they were.  They were the kings of the church yard! 

However, they were not as fierce as they liked to appear.  In truth, they were afraid of many things.  They were afraid of brooms.  They were afraid of garbage bags, boxes, and shoes.  They were afraid of dogs, foxes, and wolves.  They were afraid of snow!  They were especially afraid of scarecrows!  These made them squawk and cluck and let out the most awful noise. 

Life around the church was exciting.  There were always new and interesting things happening.  The brothers had plenty to do and enjoyed all the sights and sounds of the forest surrounding them.  There were plenty of people around too.  Their owners had three children who would often stop and visit with the roosters.  There were many people who came and went all day long at the church as well.  They always stopped and exclaimed over the brother’s beautiful feathers.  This made them crow all the louder.  They loved nothing more than being admired!

These stories are about the many adventures they faced.

As I said, it's very rough but I thought I'd go ahead and share!  They had a great life here and will definitely be missed. :-)