Back to rooster wrangling. (Maybe we could make that a new rodeo sport?)
Once again, the rooster went out onto the lawn. There are several dogs there just waiting to get their paws on the rooster. And, he doesn't seem to be smart enough not to go into their territory. Once again, I'm yelling NO! at the dogs. And once again, the rooster goes thru the cattle panel. So, I have to go all the way around the pool again. I get to the other side-no rooster. KN had gone to get a big fishing net to try and catch him if we got close enough, so she didn't see where he went.
I went back around the pool. Still no rooster. The pool is an above ground pool that's halfway in the ground. And, there's a fence around the deck. It goes almost, but not quite all the way down to the ground. I figure he's under there. There's one place where I can fit thru, so I go under. I'm now crawling around the pool looking for a rooster. Have you ever crawled on top of the seed pods from a chestnut tree? If not, it's not something I recommend. I get all the way around the front, no rooster. So now I have to crawl all the way around again, over the chestnut pods and back to the hole. (You can't go all the way around. Near the house, it's not high enough.)
Once out, we start looking for the rooster. No sign of him. We look in the trees, don't see him. Now I'm really puzzled. I look at the dogs. Not one of them has a rooster in their mouth. I had seen no evidence of a UFO, so he probably wasn't abducted by aliens. I had heard no cars stop, so he wasn't snatched for someone's stew pot. And, he wasn't dead in the road. I went, got a manure fork, and started getting up a few piles.
I hadn't been doing this long when I heard him. I stopped and listened. He WAS in a tree, I just hadn't seen him b4. So, I dropped everything, climbed the fence, then climbed the tree-a white pine. I had hoped to be able to sneak up on him from below, and grab his legs. But I wasn't quite sneaky enough. He managed to see me. (Maybe I should have been wearing camouflage.) And, just as I was ready to grab him, he moved to another spot in the tree. So, I climbed down, and went up at a different spot. This time, I didn't even get as close. He jumped to a different tree. I go to get down. That's when I realized that the bottom branches were dead. I don't know how I was able to get up w/out them breaking. So, I did my Tarzan imitation, and hung from one branch w/one hand, found a branch I could grab, put my foot on the dead branch, and was able to get to the lower branch. From there, I was able to drop to the ground.
By this time, Mr. Rooster had moved down a few trees. And, he was much higher. At this point in time, I gave up. I had pine branches in my hair, and my hands were covered w/sap! And, I had to leave in just a few to go home, get changed and go play the piano at church. I went back to my cleaning.
Once Mr. Rooster saw that I was occupied, he came down from the tree and managed to sneak back over to the chicken pen. I don't know how she did it, but KN was able to get him into the pen. I heard a big squawk and a bunch of fluttering. So, I went over to help. He couldn't get out of there, we were able to get him into a corner, and when he tried to run past KN, she was able to grab him. So, Mr. Rooster was put into the cage w/his wife, I went home got cleaned up, and went to church. I was tired!
