NOBODY'S ANGEL: The Story of Leafy, The Rooster...How I Picked A Pet I Could Love...No Dogs, No Cats...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - I'm riding the long and lonely road just east of here on my way back to Hidalgo County for a meeting with my evening cup of coffee when it hits me. Sure, a rooster! That could be my pet. A battlin' rooster, out to crow me awake in the morning. A rooster who would and wouldn't need me.

He would look sharp, confident, like the rooster in the photo atop this story.

His name would be Leafy.

Leafy would run roughshod over an eventual coop full of chickens I would construct somewhere out in the county in the same manner that Marijuana growers plant and harvest their crop far from the city. Some grassy piece of land with a rise and a meadow, a home for my flock, absolutely. Leafy would keep me apprised.

I've never been one for animals as pets, thinking they, too, are born free and, so, should live free in their element - the wilds. Leafy would get no instructions from me, other than to fight to the death if a killing coyote neared the flock. And I know Leafy would do it. Poor coyote would limp back to his kind and spread the word that there was a mean rooster in rural Hidalgo County no one - no one! - should mess with, not even the chief barbarian of the coyote empire.

I think it would be cool to own a rooster. There are, it would seem if morning sounds around here are any indication, a jillion roosters in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Indeed, I'd strike out and say there likely are a dozen roosters for every male, two dozen for every female.

The funny thing is that roosters are being outlawed in communities all across the country. Dallas is one. You can have cowboys and horses and cattle standing as symbols for Big D, but no rooster. You can, however, keep them in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they amble about backyards forever in search of frisky chickens or chicken feed. The animal world knows no more sex-starved dude than the rooster, perhaps because he is usually outnumbered 100 to one by chickens in any chicken coop. I only wish they could smile. Then, we would know, we would know exactly how sexually satisfied Leafy might be.

So, you get a little chick and you wonder whether it is a male or female (rooster or chicken). Well, you often end up with roosters unexpectedly, because it’s very hard to tell the gender of a chicken until it’s fairly old. I wish I could tell you how long a rooster can live, but I don't know.

All I know is that they hate it when a second rooster is introduced to the coop, and they will fight any would-be Lothario until only one stands. Yeah, a whole, whole lot like Valley men.

The imagery of a rooster holding court with his chickies mirrors Valley life its ownself. They'll strut about while angling in for the hook-up at courtship. Roosters are cool about their mating approach. They won't threaten, they won't attack, they won't do anything that'll surprise the target of their affection. But they'll track-in and whisper sweet nothings into the chicken's ears (Do they have ears?) and the next thing you know, well, the rooster is looking like the portrait of satisfaction.

Chicken feathers left on the ground after the mating symbolize the coupling's drama. The more feathers humped off the chicken and left behind, the rougher the sex, is what I'm told. Roosters sex chickens so they stay sexed, absolutely.

I know Leafy would be the kind of rooster who would leave them smiling. That wink of the eye as he retreated would only mean that the chicken would know that he'd be back for more, that he'd be oh-so in it for her, as he was for himself.

That's my Leafy, always the gentleman...

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