The Rooster's Song

"The dogs were good," the contractor reported when I returned home from work. "But that rooster, he crowed all day long."

Why wouldn't he? It is a sunny day with a slight breeze, and hens are roaming the pastures.

Because we live back a quarter-mile lane, few people see our roosters. More hear them. The rooster's crow can roll for a few miles.

"It's a sound you don't hear often anymore," the contractor said. Few people keep backyard chickens, and fewer keep roosters.

We've had roosters for so many years that the rooster crow has blended into the farm's white noise. But it is a song I'd miss if absent.

I wonder if the construction workers will miss it, too, when they pack up and move onto a job in town.