I have chickens, lots of chickens, thirty-five at last count and they are a noisy lot, always squawking and carrying on about this or that. Today, though, they were louder than usual and I wandered in their direction to see what all the fuss was about.

As I approached, I could see that the hens had gathered on one side of the run, while on the other, a small bantam rooster with long brown feathers on his feet, was strutting and dancing about, putting on quite the show. The Hens, however, wanted nothing to do with him and, as a group, we’re trying to drive him from the yard.

Crestfallen and cornered, I captured him easily. The only nearby farm that had roosters was just down the road, so I figured that he had escaped from there.

I cradled him in my arms, his feet and legs dangling between my fingers, and hopped in the truck for the short drive to his farm. After all, this is the neighborly thing to do, right?

During the drive, the rooster tried to squirm free and I had to re-adjust my grip which forced me to briefly take my eyes off the road. As I looked back up, I realized that I had started to drift into the oncoming lane of traffic. Fortunately, there were no other vehicles approaching and I continued on my merry way.

I returned the dejected rooster to my neighbor who thanked me saying, “He doesn’t like cages, he insists on wandering.” The neighbor then put the rooster down and it walked away. I smiled, annoyed, and waved goodbye.

While driving home, a line of farm trucks sped by and I thought of the disastrous possibilities had those same trucks arrived just ten minutes earlier. As my mind wandered, imaging the worst, I began to see the newspaper headlines:

“Local Man dies in head-on crash with huge farm truck due to fussy rooster.” I winced at the thought.

“How hard is it to keep a roaming rooster caged up and who cares what it wants?” I fumed.

“Local man dies in a horrific head-on crash trying to re-secure a spoiled rotten rooster!” I repeated, my frustration growing, “of all the ways to die and be remembered, could it possibly get any worse?”

Then it occurred to me, “Oh yes, it definitely could.”

“Local man, while trying to get a firmer grip on his neighbor’s cock, dies in a head-on crash!”