Cock-a-doodle-do.
It is possible to order a “wake up” call when staying at a hotel. This is a service that exists even though everyone has a mobile phone and there are alarm clocks in every hotel room. The traveler might order this back up service because they are weary and needing to get up at an unnatural time, like 4am.
Cock-a-doodle-Doo.
Electronic alarms used to glow through the night, the colon blinking ominously as the alarm braced itself to attack the sleeping traveler with a buzzzz-buzzzz-buzzzz that was less natural than humanities agreement to become slaves to the hours of the clock we invented. Then came the clock radio, once a fixture in every bedroom. It displayed the time in that wonderful digital numbering that meant you could always see the 8 if you looked closely. But the real magic was spelled out in the name. The clock was combined with a radio! It was possible to set your alarm to turn a radio channel on; AM or FM, your choice. The wonder of waking to traffic reports and forced laughter was now available to the world. Like all new technologies there were some detractors and one of the common slurs used against the clock radio was to call it an electronic rooster.
Cock-a-Doodle-DOO.
Before humans had clocks, we kept time by noticing when the sun came up, when it was at its highest and when it went down. These would have been the three times for people to meet. Have breakfast at dawn and go to work. Stop at midday for lunch. Go home for dinner at sunset. Simple.
Cock-A-Doodle-DOO.
No other creature on this planet relies on technology to decide when to wake up.
COCK-A-DOOODLE-DOOOO!
ALRIGHT! OK. YES: WE CAN HEAR YOU!
Before the electronic rooster there was the rooster. The male chicken whose crow has announced the arrival of new dawns since the dawn of time. But just like the weary traveler trusting hotel staff to wake them instead of the clock radio or phone, it would be foolish to rely on your rooster to wake you each sunrise. 4am is perfect if you asked the hotel receptionist to wake you at 4am. No one asked Zorro to wake us 4am. And the fact that no other rooster joins his pre-dawn caroling makes me think the idea is his and his alone.
We have six roosters. We had one, then nature took over and we have five more. Tiger was here first and doing a great job ordering around the rest of the flock while being mostly ignored. He stills crows each morning, but waits till the pre-dawn light to do so. By this time, I imagine, most of the flock is up so his declarations are more of a formality.
The new roosters are only just coming into their own. They are finding their voices as they grow into their gorgeous plumage. There’s Coco, Tiger’s first son, who is a little younger than the others and a lot littler. He isn’t crowing yet and spends much of the day running away from whoever was near him. Then we have the twins Spot and Dot who are huge, docile and colourful roosters who have only managed the occasional “honk”. It could be that they are Scottish and attempting to say, “Gog-a-ghuidhe-ghaoidhe!” and, understandably, only get as far as the first syllable. Next we have Chunky. The heaviest, most feathered and whitest rooster in the coop. His attempt at a crow is as elegant as his running style. He sounds like a cross between an old basset hound stuck in a trap, an old man who just hit his thumb with a hammer and someone who just lost their seventeenth consecutive game of monopoly. But the noisiest of them all is Zorro.
Zorro got his name because his markings as a chick looked like he was wearing a mask. As he grew he became speckled black and white all over and his saddle and hackle feathers grew longer. He is handsome, he is gentle and his crow quickly matured into a classic Cock-a-Doodle-Do! His first attempts did sound like a woman who’d fallen down an abandoned well and it’s a wonder we didn’t have Skippy pawing at a bedroom window urging us to follow.
Just like Tiger, it seems that Zorro’s instructions are mostly ignored by the rest of the flock. So maybe it is an attempt by the young rooster to stand apart from the current ruler of the roost to begin his ettempts at protection and advice earlier in the morning. Respect for elders has been put aside in an attempt to climb the pecking order through classic young male showing off. “You think 6:30 is early? Well I’ve got ambition, baby, and his flock will be mine one day.”
We’ve tried to intervene and change his extra-early morning routine. We added black shade cloth to the nursery and started putting Zorro into solitary confinement over night. The shade cloth was supposed to act as block out curtains like those found in hotel rooms. He still crows around 4am and has raised his volume to make sure the whole flock can still here from his newly darkened roost. We also thought some company might help, but no one needs to hear an old man with a sore thumb complain about having lost another board game at 4am.
A quick bit of googling uncovered the real reason for Zorro’s unwanted wake up calls. Roosters make lots of noises. They have a danger call that sends the hens darting for cover. They get very excited about tasty snacks they find which they let the hens eat. They enforce nap times. And it turns out that the iconic Cock-a-Doodle-do is in fact a call to let the flock know that everything is fine. This is why a rooster may crow at night and why they crow all day. The equivalent behaviour for a father would be to burst into his child’s bedroom in the middle of the night and scream, “EVERTHING IS FINE. I’M HERE. YOU’RE SAFE. I REPEAT, EVERYTHING IS FINE. GO BACK TO SLEEP.”
Thanks Zorro, I hope everyone in the neighborhood appreciates your 4am reassurances of safety.
