Roscoe wasn't always a loner. He was once part of a posse. He ran with four other roosters that he'd grown up with - a Red, two Buffs and a Wyandotte - they were a little gang. They hung out together in the garden and were generally shunned by the rest of the flock. In their tender youth, they were as timid as any other youngsters. They stayed close to one another and always made curfew. Boys will be boys, however, and once in their teens they adopted some rather devil-may-care behavior. They took to...(gasp!)...staying out all night.
They risked disaster for the thrill of it and even got away with it for ahwile, until one night, tragedy struck. Late one night, coyotes moved through the yard. The boys were sitting ducks. It must have been quite a scene - trails of different colored feathers wound all over the yard. One of the buffs made the rather misguided decision to flee into the goat yard, where it was met by Caspian, the night watchman (who loves chicken - sorry Buff). In the morning, I went out to the yard to find not five roosters, but one. Roscoe was wandering around the yard alone, looking confused, disoriented and yes, lonely. He looked around for his compadres but found no one. He managed to save himself, we later discovered, by hiding in a tiny space under a piece of sheet metal that leans up against the barn. He still sleeps there every night.
Eventually he got over his grief and resigned himself to a life alone. He survives on the mean streets, getting by on his wits. He's even got a little girlfriend these days. Too bad for Roscoe that he's drawn the short straw and will soon fall victim to another round of downsizing. Such is the tenuous life of a cockerel.
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