“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Before The Cock Crows

Mark 14:30   “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “today – yes, tonight – before the cock crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.”

Mark 14:68   But Peter denied it.   “I don’t know or understand what you’re talking about,” he said, and went out into the entrance.   The servant girl said to those standing around, “This fellow is one of them.”   Again Peter denied it.

Mark 14:72   immediately the cock crowed the second time.’ Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him:  “Before the cock crows twice” you will disown me three times.”   And he broke down and wept.

I wonder how many of us, if we had been in Peter’s shoes that night, would have had the guts to admit that we are His followers.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

“Behold oh man! There is a pink glow in the East”

            For as long as I can remember I would wake early every morning and I still do so to this day.   As a child I would lie awake listening to the roosters crowing on the farm and tried to visualise which one it was with the loudest voice or longest crow.   I knew them all!   I would listen for my little bantam rooster to add his voice to the choir.   In the quiet hours before daybreak you could even hear the roosters crowing at the native huts or on the next door farms proclaiming the same message that soon the sun would rise.   Just before daybreak the cows would start calling to the calves and they in turn would answer and not long after that you would hear the milkman driving the cows into the kraal.   I would be up and there to help him with the calves.

Many varieties of birds sing at sunrise and it is the males of the species who sing the loudest and most frequently. No one knows all of the reasons why birds sing, but some of the activity can be explained where the songs are used to re-establish communications with the flock after night has passed.

            You know you're in the country when you hear a rooster crow at the crack of dawn (or at three in the morning).   However, what actually makes a rooster crow?   Is he warding off possible intruders or what he perceives as intruders?   Bantam roosters as well as standard roosters crow as loud as the other despite their small size.   Rooster's start crowing at around five months of age and crow regularly until they die of natural causes   Roosters crow to announce the sunrise, but this is a little too early for many people so if you want complaints from your neighbours, just keep a few fowls in your back yard.

The chicken's Latin name is the purposefully repetitive Gallus gallus.   According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the plump bird has been domesticated for about 4,000 years.   The male chicken is also called a chanticleer or cock, of course, his female counterpart is the hen.   Cockerels are youthful males of less than one year old.   The rooster is territorial and because he oversees a grouping of many egg-laying hens, his guarding skills must be particularly astute.   He will spring into a defensive posture should any other roosters or invaders enter his territory.   To most effectively keep watch on his flock, the rooster will tend to position himself on an elevated perch, about 5 feet above the ground.   When predators advance, the rooster will sound off with his ever-familiar cock-a-doodle-doo mantra, and this can happen any time, day or night.

            Of course, like most birds, the rooster has more than a one-call vocabulary.   He knows how to cluck, not unlike his female ally.   In order to direct hens to a source of food, roosters have been known to emit a kind of staccato of clucks.   Mother hens communicate in a similar fashion with their chicks.   Also, the rooster deploys flocking calls, through which he attempts to round up scattered members of the flock, keeping the hens together.

            I really did not mean to write so much about a rooster crowing but once I got started, I just could not stop.   Recently I wanted to buy a few hens and a rooster to keep in our back yard; but Yvonne said a definite “NO!”   So I have to lie awake in the early hours listening to a rooster crowing in the distance and wonder who has the guts to keep him in the city.   I hope he has kind neighbours who understand the longing in his heart for ‘Country Life’.

(I obtained a lot of my information and facts from the Internet.)

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