And Then There Was One

My money was on the big guy.....

When Ed moved in with us, he was the hugest dog we had ever had. Mostly we stuck to terriers, mixed chihuahuas and Frenchies, all from rescues, but somehow we ended up with a 60 pound black and white dandy who tries to sit on your head when he hears thunder in Houston.

In a “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em move,” I started taking early morning walks with him just as the sun was coming up, which meant that we became impartial (not unopinionated) observers of the goings on in our neighborhood.

We knew the whistle of the lady who likes to floss her teeth while she’s herding her orange cats through the area. We came to say hello to folks doing the same thing as us, never learning a name and probably not being able to recognize them without their dogs.

But hands down, our favorite staple sighting in the morning was the roosters. Yes I live in an urban neighborhood, about a mile from the French Quarter, which I will debate is less of a neighborhood and more of a concept these days. New Orleans has ALWAYS had a thriving feral poultry community for as long as I have lived here. It’s mostly roosters, on our side of St Claude, when I cross over to the other side in my car there always seems to be mostly chickens running around which begs the question:

Are our poultry running a pullet prostitution ring in the neighborhood? I picture the roosters being pimps, holding a towel wrapped wire coat hanger between their forward facing toes, clucking for their “gals” to get back to work and get some business up in the coop. This probably isn’t true but I need something to occupy my mind in the summer other than the heat index.

In the course of our walk, we came across 4 roosters in 4 distinct areas of Bywater.

Far and away, the most senior of the male birds was Julio. He patrolled the area mostly from the empty lot on North Rampart and Independence to the outdoor area behind the school. Thus the name Julio (look up Simon & Garfunkel if you’re unaware) because he guarded the schoolyard. Strangely enough, there were only stray cats lounging on the sidewalks and squirrels scampering up trees like shoplifters leaving the Family Dollar in his domain. He would proudly crow hello as we walked by and I learned from a neighbor that he started sometimes as early as 2:30 AM. This reinforces my whorehouse theory.

Everyone seemed to know Julio, he was never bothered by the kids playing football or the crows in the tops of the live oak. Even the day it snowed a foot, Julio could be seen sitting atop the blocking sled letting everyone know he was unbothered by a little solid precipitation. We always felt a comfort when we would pass, even though I swear sometimes he would look at us like we had caught him doing something nefarious and run in the opposite direction. (Brow beating a young chick perhaps?)

One day, about 6 months ago, before Mardi Gras and after Halloween, he just wasn’t around, no “good morning” or “I got this” crow, there just was a day when no one saw Julio anymore. Happens to pimps I suppose.

Then there was the most beautiful of roosters…………. Hans.

Hans lived in the trees and the back lot and the catering area of a German beer garden called Brats Y’all in the neighborhood. Hans had no other competition for nutrients, he would brazenly strut up to the outside picnic tables and just stare at the patrons until he got a snack. I never gave him anything other than pretzel pieces, but word on the street was that Hans would eat CHICKEN, which might make him the most bad ass of the Bywater cocks. I mean he was rumored to be a cannibal and there is not much more bad ass than that. I shudder to think if he would ever be considered a cannibal pimp (which would make a great name for an autobiography.)

When we would make our trek to the rusty rainbow, we had to pass by the outside yard for the beer garden and there would be Hans, sitting up on the split rail fence, the sun reflecting a golden sheen off his very shiny sickle feathers, comb was a vibrant almost magenta, chest puffed out proud as a Harvard graduate. He would unfurl a crow that could be heard over the ear splitting whistle of the train dragging what I imagine to be explosives and poisonous gas through the edge of our neighborhood. It made the morning feel so hopeful.

Unfortunately, the beer garden has pulled up stakes and taken Hans with them. I imagine a 1940’s Hollywood style life where Hans is living in a gilded corral with a replica of Mad King Ludwig’s castle as a single rooster coop where a manservant brings him freshly killed grubs 3 times a day.

The most elusive and by far the largest Bywater yard bird was the one everyone I know just referred to as “The Rooster”. He was always seen sitting on the low branch of the live oak in the neutral ground on Poland Street at Dauphine. “The Rooster” was about the size of a Volkswagen Bug and because of the never falling leaves on the trees, one could never get a good bead on the EXACT size of him. Every few days in the early AM we would hear a throaty and baritone crow from the direction of the first tree to the left. Looking over we could see the silhouette of a monstrous cockerel, the feathers almost touching the ground from a height of about 3 feet.

He would best be compared to Jabba the Hutt in that he was quite scary in size, neighbors have reported that if they didn’t acknowledge his presence at least once a day, it became a “thing” and he would dress them down every time they passed.

My conjecture for the demise of “The Rooster” is that he was kidnapped by a petting zoo run by crackheads and in a fight to the end, both crackhead and poultry prince expired and were hauled off by some municipal service. I mean of course New Orleans has an office of rooster and crackhead affairs to take care of this sort of thing.

This brings us to the final entrant in our roosterpalooza of Bywater. There is an empty lot at the corner of Lesseps and Royal, across from the Parleaux Beer lab that the railroad tracks actually run through. The lot has been for sale for years just as the house adjacent has. In the far left corner, under kudzu and cat’s claw there is a stump of banana plants the size of elephants that houses a relatively combative almost militant rooster that Ed and I have donned Ornery.

Ornery has thin greasy feathers, his half mangled comb is a pale light pink and one of his feet is missing a talon. Ornery has seen some shit. I’m guessing the sound of the train combined with the poor diet of mosquito blood and anemic slugs has left Ornery with a constant hanger that he has known for so long he just lives with it instead of attempting to make it better and then failing. Ornery spends a lot of his time on the tracks, hobbling over the gravel between ties.

This very morning he made a half ass attempt at chasing us but when I yelled: “Back off Ornery!!!” he stopped and turned around to head back to his cluster of banana plants, giving up with a shrug of what could possibly be called rooster shoulders.

Feeling philosophical this morning, Ed and I have come to the conclusion that to make it in this town you sometimes have to just make you way, gravel to gullet with what you have. Maybe Julio , Hans, and “The Rooster” are somewhere better off than they were. Maybe there’s a heaven for those with a spur claw that have never had to use them, but I’m pretty sure when the next whirligig blows through, Ornery will be the one left to alert the National Guard as to where the bodies are with his hoarse crow and his angry stilted gate.

Long Live Ornery!!!

Vitals: 83 degrees with a surprisingly comfortable 65% humidity, the 14 MPH wind is making it feel like your favorite bartender made 2 dirty martinis by mistake and left them both in front of you.

3 days down

180 to go……………….