Susan Smith: Black Rooster Must Die

Originally published July 8, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith


The black rooster is the devil. He waits until your back is turned, bending over to scoop up the feed from the barrels, then he attacks. Today he drew blood, jabbing me in the foot because I was stupidly wearing flip flops in the chicken yard.

The creepy thing is that once he engages, he won’t quit. I threw the lid of the feed bin at him, then the compost bucket (chickens love their vegetables) but he just kept coming. I ran out of the yard without the eggs, slamming the fence door with Black Rooster just inches away. He glared malevolently through the fence..

Not all roosters are mean. For years, the king of our chicken yard was a Buff Orphington rooster named Big Red. He was helped on his patrols by Dewey, the second in command. The butterscotch-colored Buffs are probably the nicest chickens in the world. The hens make sweet cooing and clucking sounds when you lift then up for their eggs. And they make great mother hens.

Big Red lived to be about seven, dying of old age. And Dewey lasted only a few weeks after that (proving he really was a number two), pulled through the fence by a coon.

After that, we had Elvis, a noisy, pretty red Leghorn. He had a moment of fame in 2007, starring in a wedding at L’Etoile, Madison’s premier restaurant. The chef, Tory Miller, is Korean American, and there’s a Korean tradition about having a rooster and hen present at the wedding. (Sorry, the hens look alike and thus don’t have names.) Elvis and his anonymous hen spent the wedding night at the Mansion Hill Inn. Wonder how the other guests felt about his 4 a.m. aria?

Sadly, Elvis died in the great possum attack of February 2008.

We got Black Rooster that spring in a mixed batch from the neighbors. He’s small, and not at all pretty. Judging by the photos in the Murray McMurray catalog, he might be a an Ancona, an old Italian breed. Says the catalog, their “active temperament make them a good bird to raise where hawks, owls, and animal predators are a problem . . .they are very quick and alert.”

So he’d probably last longer than the better tempered birds against the possums. But pecking the ankles attached to the hand that feeds you is not an adaptive trait.

Black Rooster will get to test his mettle against another Italian American, Rosella. She’s a grandmotherly farm lady who works for us, and she’s not afraid of Black Rooster. “I’ll fix his wagon,’’ she promised.

Postscript: She did. Black Rooster is now in Rosella’s freezer, awaiting his next appearance on the platter.