Roosters and Rattlesnakes

Some of my first memories growing up on a farm were of my father butchering animals we raised for food… Rabbits, pigs, turkeys, and every once in a while a chicken… It was rare for my father to kill any of the chickens though, because they provided eggs daily… When you had 7 kids to feed, daily eggs were a necessity you couldn’t afford to give up… It also wasn’t often we were lucky enough to have a hog or other large animals to provide us with so much food… It was usually something my father brought home that someone had too many of… I’m sure they said, “Let’s give it to the Hodges; they wont pass it up…”

Once he came home with 75 roosters that someone was getting rid of, and he butchered all of them in a day… I was young but the memory of their headless bodies running about in an awkward unbalanced stride spurting blood, and the aroma of boiled feathers is something I’ll never forget… But it meant we had food to eat for months to come… My father taught us at a young age that these animals were food, and our other animals were pets, or had a specific job to do on the farm…

He was what some would call a religious man, I would call a spiritual man… His religion or him for that matter was not found inside a church when I was growing up… Yet, he was in touch with the goodness and hope that can not be seen in this world, yet can be felt immensely if one just quiets their mind… By example he showed me that God and positive thinking on the edge of hope along with acquired skills from struggling were all intertwined when feeding your family working 7 days a week… All of these things were something abundant in the harsh rural landscape we called home… I watched with amazement one afternoon, him lay hands on and pray for an old rooster we had as our pet for many years… The roosters foot had become crippled… It was knotted and twisted and as big as a sweet potato… My father for weeks would come home and feed him by hand and give him his own water bowl… We had acquired a younger rooster about the same time… He was twice the size as the old one, and as most young males are, cocky with the ladies in the hen house… He would chase them, and harass them constantly… He also was very cruel to the old crippled rooster who could no longer move around; pecking him whenever he would pass bye… But this would not last long…


My friend and I were out playing in the yard… In the background we could hear the young rooster at it again running the hens… The old rooster sat not able to move, helpless to defend the hens he had protected for so long… We stopped playing for a moment, for suddenly there was one loud screech that broke the silence of the afternoon’s heat waves… We could see something struggling to move on the ground… We ran over to see what had happened… The old crippled rooster laid on the ground. His 3 inch spur attached to his clubbed foot, was still sticking in the young rooster’s head… Punched into one eye and out the other… The old rooster waited patiently for just the right moment to get his revenge… His hens would be harassed no more…


Sometimes the unbelievable happens in nature… I’ve seen it with my own eyes… One of the most bizarre things I saw as a child still baffles me to this day… Because if anything would have gone differently I would not be here typing this out… I was outside I think I was everyday of my growing up years playing in the backyard… I had grown tired of my surroundings and decided to walk through the high summer grown weeds to make my way to the woods for a bigger adventure… As I started toward the trailhead there was a chicken standing in my way… Walking toward me… It was acting strangely like a rooster would do, like it was going to attack me… I was very young but old enough to know if an animal was acting like this you left it alone… Simple enough, I thought, I’ll just walk around it… To my surprise it moved with me; blocking me off with it’s strange cackling… That damn thing looked like a baby T-Rex… What is your damage you crazy ass chicken? I just want to go to the woods and play… Then something slow moving caught my eye… It’s muscled diamondback body was making its way into the weeded filed just on the other side of the chicken… It was well over six feet long and I would have walked right into it if it were not for this bird…

I made my way inside to get my father and my uncle Bill… As they made their way into the tall grass with garden tools looking for the snake my brother jokingly said it was probably a harmless corn snake… About the time he said this the familiar sound of rattles burst into the air… My father and uncle seemed to be suddenly dancing on top of the weeds… I never saw my father not kill a rattler no matter what the size… But this Buzz Worm he decided not to tangle with… He said two things when him and my uncle were safely away from the snake… “That thing was huge!!!” and “We’re going to let him go…”