Rooster Box

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I stuffed him into a pillowcase and drove to a lonely stretch of desert highway. With one hand on the wheel and an eye on the rear-view mirror, I hurled the demon out the window. He bounced hard and tumbled through Sagebrush until he slammed into a Joshua Tree.

And then I woke up.

It had been weeks since anyone had slept through the night. Wide awake, I’d watch the shadows dance on the ceiling, feeling helpless. First, I heard one rooster crow, then Rooster Boy crowed, and then another, a few blocks away, replied. The conversations went on for hours. Wrapping my pillow around my ears, I rolled over to face David, asleep with the last pair of earplugs.

Rooster Boy was a handsome chicken. His rubbery comb drooped over his eyes like a rebellious teenager. His wattle dangled under his corn-colored beak. He strutted, tail feathers flouncing, mindful of his giant spurs. Rooster Boy free-ranged with his flock at Cook Peak, protecting them, courting them, and hunting for bugs with them. At dusk, he returned to the coop and perched among the hens. But during the night, anytime there was a noise or movement at Cook Peak, Rooster Boy sounded the alarm.

The next morning, after another sleepless night, I Googled how to stop a rooster from crowing. Scrolling through web pages, I found answers that ranged from surgically removing vocal cords to injecting the poor bird with beef hormones. One suggested a recipe for Southwestern Chicken with mole sauce. The most helpful site described how a rooster needed to fully extend its body to crow, indicating that a confined rooster was a quiet rooster. That gave me an idea.

I opened the garage door and felt the ache in my back. Looking at the mess, I saw bat droppings again, scattered on the roof of my daughter’s VW Bug restoration project. Power tools lined the wall, surrounded by plastic tubs, two filing cabinets, a Harley with a dead battery, and a dried-up tarantula. The tall red tool chest sat in the corner, nearly empty after years of home improvement projects. I found a sledgehammer, some finishing nails, and a six-inch protractor, since the measuring tapes were missing.

In the side yard, I hunted through the woodpile for scraps. Rooster Boy and his ladies grazed nearby, picking and scratching through the grass as they hunted for pill bugs. Somehow, I felt strangely in control for the first time in months. I was going to build a Rooster Box.

My box resembled a crude window planter, anchored to the back wall of the chicken coop. Hand-hewn wood from an old Methodist church was joined by tiny finishing nails. I built the lid from a plank of Pergo and two barn door hinges, set at an eight-inch height, as the website advised. Finished, I padded the inside with hay and waited for nightfall.

When night finally arrived, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of catching Rooster Boy. I imagined terrified hens and Rooster Boy charging me with his spurs for a lopsided fight. I didn’t know what to expect or how to load him into the box without an altercation, but I knew I had to try. My reputation in the neighborhood was at stake.

A little later that same night, after the chickens returned to roost and the lighting dimmed, I opened the coop door quietly. Rooster Boy sat wedged between two black hens and watched me with his blinking yellow eyes. Carefully, I reached over the hens and with both hands, gently plucked him off the perch. Some time between reaching and plucking, I bumped a hen, and mayhem erupted. I shoved Rooster Boy headfirst inside the box and slammed the lid shut on his tail feathers.

The next morning, Rooster Boy only crowed at dawn. He had worked the lid of the box enough for his head to pop up like a jack-in-the-box. Modifications began immediately. I sled-hammered lawn stakes into the coop’s rafters, creating locks that swung down to hold the lid of the Rooster Box in place. That night, I awoke to the sounds of coyotes and a strange tirade of muffled crowing. In the morning, I found Rooster Boy crowing, lying horizontally in the box with more than enough room to crow. On the third day, I marched out to the coop at dusk, grabbed Rooster Boy, and stuffed him inside the Rooster Box with six hens for a tight fit. That night, the crowing ended.

Coyotes howled in the ravine and woke me up. They were getting closer, and soon they’d be in my front yard. I pulled the covers up and listened. Rooster Boy was silent, and I wondered if my neighbors liked me again. Now, they waved when I drove by. One brought me a bag of homegrown tomatoes. I also wondered about Rooster Boy. These days, he was more pastoral, leading his ladies across the road to get to the other side to scratch in the oak leaves. He seemed happy, and so was everyone else.

As the coyotes drifted away and quiet returned, we settled into the night, waiting for sleep to carry us to our quiet place, inside our Rooster Box.