A ROOSTER'S TALE

            A rooster's crowing, popularly known as cock-a-doodle-do, is really fascinating. For the rural folks it is like their alarm clock because it wakes them up in the wee hours ,as if, asking them to finish the morning ablution and to get ready for their daily chores or to go to their places of work. Anyway, a cock's crowing leaves a number questions unanswered; to some it is baffling. People can not say why a cock crows  so noisily , as if singing a note, slightly arching its neck . However, ornithologists state that a cock's crowing is a bold assertion of its territorial rights. This apart, it is also believed to do so to attract the hens. Its crowing may also mean a warning for a rival cock that trespasses into its territory and  may be taken to be a challenge for a fight.

            During my school days  in the early 1970s at Surada, Ganjam I had seen a belligerent rooster at the Surada Veterinary that attacked not only its rivals that trespassed in to the prohibited zone, but also attacked people who dared to enter into the veterinary premises with their ailing animals especially dogs or cows to be treated there. It was a big, strong and stout rooster of white and brown plumage with a bright red cockscomb on its head , a dangling wattle  and an aquiline beak. Hardly had a person entered the verandah of the Vet, when the rooster moving about in the company  of hens in the premise  ran menacingly towards that person and attacked him. Nobody dared enter the veterinary apprehending a sudden attack by the rooster on them. We children had faced the angry rooster once when we had entered in to the Vet's quarter on a Teachers Day. I still now remember the incident and the angry rooster.

( Writer- Dr. Pradeep Kumar Nayak )