Rooster crow stirs chicken memories

A couple of days ago I heard a rooster crow in broad daylight. My heart leaped up as if I'd seen a rainbow in the sky. What's the big deal, you ask? Hearing roosters crowing was a great part of my youth.

The roosters were the first live things we heard of a morning. Early too. Long before daylight. In their physical makeup our roosters automatically wound up so as to sound their morning calls at so many hours and minutes before anything else is awake? I suppose if I had been raised on a donkey, camel or elephant farm, I would have been nostalgic about their raucous brays or snorts, although they don't start while all else is quiet.

The rooster I recently heard wasn't even a live one. The crowing came in on the airwaves via TV. I thought to myself, that's old Redtail. Like most farm families, we had several roosters and named them all.

Waking sleepily, I felt I could tell which one of ours was crowing. Yes, they do have different-sounding crows. Just go to the fair some time when you can hear them all crowing at the same time. Some are loud and assertive. Others are just generic rooster crows. The little bantams are like sopranos. Together they make a suitable barnyard chorus reminiscent of foxhounds on a hot trail, although the roosters aren't chasing anything. Just showing off, proclaiming their territory. Perhaps so happy about everything they can't contain it any longer and want the world to know. Maybe they want the hens to get up, shake the sleep out of their eyes and get on with egg production so as to carry on their breed.

Having heard Redtail, the first caller, Lou and I, while still in bed, listened to hear the others join in.

"That's Buffy," I'd say.

"And that's Black Silver."

Old Redtail was our Rhode Island Red rooster. His tail feathers arched up and fell back down just like fountain waters. Buffy was our Buff Orpington, and Black Silver was our Silver Laced Wyandotte. We had White Leghorns and White Rocks too. This mixture of pedigreed roosters and amalgamated harem hens provided brown, white and speckled eggs.

Farm housewives seldom settled on one breed and exchanged with each other "setting eggs" to see what the results would be.

Our Buff Orpingtons were pretty. It is said that a poultry judge at a fair was asked, "What color is a Buff Orpington?" He removed a gold watch from his pocket and replied, "This color."

I thought our Silver-Laced Wyandottes were the prettiest. Their feathers are so distinctly marked, being silvery white down and out from the spine and edged with shiny greenish black, one could easily think each was hand-painted.

It was always interesting to see what the baby chicks would look like when laid by the same hen who stole her nest out to some isolated place. One would think they would all look alike, but you're forgetting the rooster who had some say-so in this. There may be 11 fuzzy little yellow chicks and one all black.

Before most of us purchased our own incubators, we ordered baby chicks from hatcheries. They came by mail to your nearest post office. In the early spring chick-ordering time was always about the same for each family. It was such a pleasure to enter the post office and hear all those hundreds of chicks cheeping. They weren't as melodious as the barnyard chorus but gave one a sense of new beginnings.

I'm told by my local postmaster that baby chicks still come by parcel post. Furthermore, they can deliver them to your home.

I may drop in the post office some early spring day to see if I can again hear that baby chick chorus or noise as you may call it.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.