MELVIN THE ROOSTER
I RAISED FROM A CHICK
By Diana
I am vividly remembering being 7 years old having raised a blue-dyed Easter chick to adulthood. Chicks for sale were common in the five and dime stores in East Saint Louis, Illinois, certainly not allowed these days.
Not too long after Easter,I relocated Melvin to the farm of my unmarried great aunts, Lottie and Ida , both in their 60’s, in Ruma, Illinois (pop. 100) where their ancestors homesteaded, escaping the Irish potato famine. Aunt Lottie, the older, was thin and about 4’10”; Aunt Ida was close to 200 pounds stronger and shorter at about 4’8”. I spent each summer and all long holidays with them.
Their two story wooden house had kerosene lanterns for lights and a two- person out house with daddy long legs spiders as occupants . My aunts packed drinking and bathing water from the well and cistern and chopped wood for their cooking and heating. We ate food from their garden and each spring their mail carrier delivered a box of 100 Rhode Island red chicks to their mailbox at the highway up a ½ mile on the dirt road. I learned a lot from them.
By late the next summer very well fed Melvin had grown to a full-sized menace with talons. From his handsome comb atop his head to his spurs, he was at least two feet tall, very well developed and his height came up just past my waist without even trying.
This huge red and black rooster and I initially played what I thought was a game.
He would charge me and stop, turn quickly and strut off with a swagger clucking. I thought nothing of that advance since I used to carry him around in a shoebox and feed him special beetle larvae I dug up in the garden especially for him. The game gradually became more ominous with his charging and stopping closer and closer to me – eventually flying up into the air as he stomped. I began to feel very uncomfortable. He was by now quite a big bird, the only rooster in the free-range farm.
MY range of the farm was greatly limited by this ruffian, I felt myself cowering-- also AND JUST as bad -- I felt a kind of suffocation since I had also been FREE RANGE. Now I was becoming cramped, corralled.
Melvin continued to charge me and stop and I could only go throughout the area past the picket fence to the hen house, cow barn, horse barn and grain silo, if one of my great aunts was with me. Melvin's threats were ongoing until one late afternoon when he cornered me and ATTACKED. From a full speed flying leap, he ran up my front and got me with his spurs, badly bloodying both of my legs. and while I was able to protect my face I fought him off ... barely.
Running while crying and crying while running I sought her arms -- but got to hug the big tummy -- of Aunt Ida.
"Don't YOU let him bully you" she chided almost gently. She heard my woeful story and in my telling her, not only did I feel better, I hatched a plan… BECAUSE I GOT IT LOUD AND CLEAR… I was on my own to deal with the demon bird.
My peaceful coexistence plan was as follows : I would go out when I KNEW he wouldn't be by the house, when he'd be in the orchard pecking at fallen fruit or out in the truck patch feasting on bugs and keeping his girls happy. I'd leave him alone and he would leave me alone, I reasoned.
The next day I had seen him at the far end of the one-acre truck patch, so I busied myself beyond the fence cutting sod out of the lawn to build a counter for my play house. All of a sudden I see this streak of red and black tearing across the truck patch heading for me on the lawn.
While I was not going to let him bully me, I could ALSO not out run him.
Amazingly, a calm came over me when I realized I had to defend myself or else suffer even more scratches and the disappointment -- maybe even disapproval --from my great aunts.
I luckily found an old shovel handle there by the garden gate I had just passed through. I steadied my grip… took some deep breaths and with determined fright …THIS TIME ... just as he was flying up at me through the air I swung my weapon with all my corralled constitution and delivered a fierce BLOW to the body of the bully beast. He fell back with a dazed look in his beady eyes, ruffled his feathers, righted himself, and came at me once more. AGAIN I whacked him good with all my might. This time he was shocked and stunned and visibly gravely injured.
I remember instantly feeling SO sorry for him for I had raised him from a chick--BUT the BAD BIRD had attacked me…. Repeatedly!
I heard the bang of the screen door and saw Aunt Lottie dressed in her handmade flour sack dress wiping her hands on her apron as she came running out to understand the commotion.
I was still SO angrily yelling at Melvin to NOT BOTHER ME EVER AGAIN!! TO LEAVE ME ALONE!!
Shaking all the while I was declaring my victory. As Aunt Lottie approached, arms extended I ran to her triumphantly. She hugged me like she was really proud of me -- like I had passed some kind of test. We were both jumping up and down.
My fright faded -- hugged away by Aunt Lottie and immediately I felt relieved and strangely, powerfully full of myself-- probably for the first time in my life. It was as if in those moments of combat the rooster’s swagger transferred to me. HE certainly wasn't charging, swaggering, strutting, or clucking anymore.
While she was thumping my back with her strong, arthritic hands, Aunt Lottie promised me he WASN'T going to bother any of us any more. He had actually begun to attack her as well when she went to the hen house to gather the eggs. That’s why the old shovel handle was at the garden gate!
‘He ain't gonna bother us again, 'cause we're gonna make soup out of 'im!!" And we did … with 'dumplins'.
