41 Days was a Lofty Idea.

As you’ll hear in this audio clip, beginning at 4 am, Buddy crows once every 30 seconds until around 7 pm. I became acutely aware of this because Buddy was sharing a 1 room 384 square foot house with a tin roof with me and both dogs, one of which has always possessed a strong sense of social justice. My aussie knows the rules i hold for her and her sister. You can bark as much as you want outdoors. In fact, i encourage it, because there are different barks for porcupine, deer, coyote, fox, raccoon/possum/armadillo and human….they’re like a doorbell with customized rings for each intruder showing up uninvited. Its a very useful and appreciated alert system for the homestead. However, once you are in the house there are really only 4 acceptable reasons to bark under that tin roof. One: you’ve eaten something you really shouldnt have, are regretting all recent life choices, and need to be let outside to attend to the urgent business of projectile shitting and puking green for miles where mom doesnt have to use 10 thousand paper towels on cleanup. Two: there is a dangerous intruder in the yard that could potentially pose a violent threat to the chickens, yourself, or mom. Three: the sun is fully up on a weekday and mom is showing no sign of going to work which means she’s probably slept through all 40 alarms as well as the one plugged into the wall and needs your help keeping her career. Four: something is on fire. If cashew barks in the house it is absolutely ear booming under that tin ceiling. I calmly rise from bed, turn on the light, and run through the check list. I check to see if anyone is pacing and holding their legs together as if the biggest shit is coming down the pipes and they’re not sure how much longer they can hold it in. I watch for whimpering or scratching at the door behavior. If there is none and theres no stomach gurgling, i cross that one off the list. I put my head lamp on, get the rifle, leave them in the house, and go do a sweep of the immediate area near the chicken pens, dog run, house, and sheds. I check to make sure the sun is not up and the time is still before dawn. Then i walk around the interior and exterior of the house smelling for smoke and looking for flame. Lastly, i check all 4 stove burners and the oven to make sure all cooking surfaces are turned to “off”. Then i walk directly back over to Cashew and give her a good swat on the butt, usually accompanied with a stern verbal scolding and i go back to bed. In this house we dont bark because of the wind. We dont bark because we heard a car or motorcycle up the road. We dont bark because a song bird tweeted. Not simply because the echo on the tin hurts my ears but because if you have a dog that barks at everything, you’ll never know when they’re barking at something you should act on. I cant use them as an effective doorbell if they’re ringing 24/7. So, ive trained them that there are 4 acceptable reasons to bark while in the house and with the exception of thunder, both dogs adhere to the criteria pretty religiously. And in return i take them seriously when they bark and go thoroughly through the checklist of 4 things to investigate. Its a good system. A system Buddy was not familiar with, which became wildly apparent to Cashew when Buddy began to crow once every 30 seconds beginning at 5 am. I heard the crowing begin. How could i not? I was sleeping 2 feet away from him in my zip up mosquito net tent bed with a tin ceiling. I also heard the jingle of at least one dog’s tags. I cracked open an eyelid to observe Cashew standing nose to beak with the rooster in front of his crate, only the metal bars separating them. She seemed to be willing him to be quiet. Roosters crow. Thats what they do. I didnt think we’d have much luck stopping him so i didnt try. I heard Cashew’s “im about to bark in the house” warning growl ans i piped up sternly, “Don’t you dare.” I knew what would happen if Cashew barked at Buddy. It wouldnt result in Buddy seeing the error of his ways and vowing to live a reformed noise free existence. I thought at least if she didnt bark at him, maybe i could catch a minute of shut eye here or there between crows. I dreamed that maybe he’d wait five minutes once or twice but no…..starting at 5 am he crowed religiously every 30 seconds until i left for work and wasnt home to hear it any longer. That first night, Cashew heeded my warning but then i left them all crated in the house together and Cashew and Sili probably had to hear Buddy crow every 30 seconds for upwards of 8 hours before i came back and let them outside. Going into that second night, neither dog slept right by Buddy’s pen. They both curled up together near the front door in front of the oven. On the second day Buddy began crowing every 30 seconds at 4 in the morning. I heard Cashew’s tags jingle. When i opened my eyes, to my surprise, she was not standing in front of Buddy’s crate. She was standing in front of me, at my bed. She had her lip curled and her head cocked, looking at me like, “Are you going to do something about this or should i?” In her eyes, Buddy wasnt following the house rules. She could not understand why in tarnation this creature was allowed to bark when none of the 4 disasters that rendered barking in the house acceptable were happening. She stood beside my bed and blew air out through her nose. I zipped the mosquito net tent shut in response. I was very sleep deprived and drained from work. I was trying to get just a few minutes of sleep here and there between his every 30 to 60 second crows. It vaguely registered that Cashew wanted something done here but i was basically conscious but asleep. I tried to go back to sleep. And then it happened. Cashew barked. She stood directly in front of Buddy’s crate and gave her loudest most intimidating bark she could muster to put this new strange looking dog in its place. Within seconds i heard the frantic squawking of a ballistic rooster flapping about the crate and knocking everything over. He was screaming bloody murder like someone was after him with a butcher knife. Crowing was one noise but screaming was another entirely. More long winded. Crowing went like: “cock-a-doodle-doo” or more realistically “er-er-er-er-errrrrrr.” Screaming was a noise like “BAWCK!!!!!!!!! Bck….bck…….bck…….bck…..bck….bck……BAWCK!!!!…bck…bck….BAWCK!!!!’ BAWCK!!!!! BAWCK!!!!!!” Complete with attempted flight and less than graceful acrobatics resulting in the flinging of both seed and poop in any and all directions. I tried shooshing him like a baby, “shhhhhh…..shhhhh…..shhhhhhh….shhhhhh, you’re okay….” I tried getting down on his level on the floor and speaking in a soothing voice….you know what the only thing that would soothe him was? Me singing Sheldon Cooper’s comfort song from the show BIG BANG THEORY: “soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur…..happy kitty…sleepy kitty…purr purr purr”. So there i am “shhhhh shhhh-ing a rooster at 4 in the morning and singing “soft kitty” to a giant orange bird in my best “miss rachel” voice and he’s settled down and unpoofed himself and is beginning to close that big golden eye of his when guess who barks for the hell of it, just to let him know that she better not hear another peep out of him…….just guess…. Rouuuuuuufgh! And he immediately starts up again with the “BAWCK!!!!!!…bck….bck…..BAWCK!!!!! BAWCK!!!!!…bck…BAWCK!!!!! And the flapping and flailing about, the flinging of both seed, poop, and now the spilling of the water….. i stand up and look at her, “Why?”. She looks at me as if to say, “hey, i gave you a chance to handle it. You wanted to sleep. So i’ll train the new weird dog you brought home.” I yell at her which the rooster then cant differentiate between yelling at her and yelling at him and then more screaming and flailing and flinging of seed and shit in all directions. I get in the bed and put the pillow over my head and try to drown them all out, but it continues. So, i get up again. I get down on his level. I make eye contact. I shhhh shhhh him. I sing soft kitty in my best miss rachel voice. He unpoofs himself and his little head droops towards the floor. His eyes close. I tip toe back to bed. My eyes are closed no more than 4 minutes when i hear at Max volume, “cock-a-doodle-doo!” Cashew goes, “That’s it! He didnt get the message! I will tell him again.” Barking…..screaming and thrashing…..which leads to more barking, indicating that she would like him to stop that at once, which leads to more hysteria from the rooster, more disciplinary barking, and more absolute hysteria from the rooster…..For two hours i laid there willing it to stop, occasionally getting up to sing soft kitty to no avail because he’d always crow in a few minutes which would activate nurse ratchet/prison guard at rikers in a fur suit over there and if she thought she wasnt being listened to she’d get right up to his crate and scream at him inches from his face to quit screaming, cuz that had proved so effective a tactic for the past 1 hour and 45 minutes……

After two hours i rose from bed and through gritted teeth said, “Stay away from me…..for your own good.” Both dogs went to the door and sat, then laid down warily. I put food in their bowls and put them in the crates to eat it before letting them out. Both dogs refused to eat. The rooster continued his eternal song, “cock-a-doodle-doo.” Cashew began her “im gonna bark” growl. I pointed a finger in her face and with crazy woman danger eyes i said in my best psycho voice, “ZIP IT!” Both dogs sat down quietly but refused to eat. I said, “fine. We’re all on hunger strike! Great! Go outside!” I opened the door and let both dogs out to the dog run. I said “stay here.” I returned to the house. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Sixty seconds later, “cock-a-doodle-doo!” I calmly refilled Buddy’s water dish and Buddy’s food dish. I picked up all the rooster poop and seed he had flung around the house. I put that in the trash. We’ll come back to this later.

I was pretty good at ignoring Buddy. Sili was pretty good at ignoring Buddy. He was annoying as heck when it came to volume level and frequency of crowing but Sili and i seemed to just know that he was a bird biologically wired to crow and there was nothing we could do but try to endure it. The life cycle of a stick tight flea was 41 days from baby to whats considered adulthood. So, we just needed to survive 41 days of sharing the one room tiny house with an excessively vocal rooster. Cashew was not as good at ignoring Buddy and his vocalizations. She engaged in nightly bark offs with Buddy and i began to worry about whether she would give him a heart attack and this would be all for nothing. Nevermind that the racket of their bark offs was worse than the crowing and resulted in seed and poo everywhere. My friend suggested i put a towel over his crate at night like a parakeet and see if that quieted him down and convinced him it was time to sleep. It worked in that it got him to sleep till 6 am instead of starting up his warning that the sun was near at 4 am. However, at 6 am on the dot every morning he would start clucking and moving around…..within 1 minute he’d make his first crow, and then every 30 seconds after.