Rude Awakening

Its out there...somewhere

There's a monster lurking in this quiet valley. You wouldn't know it just from looking around. There's no creepy feeling or chills down your spine. Unlike the snakes and killer wasps and centipedes I never saw it but I sure heard it this morning. It was a sound that would make your blood run cold. The kind of thing that would make you vow never to come back to this deceptively tranquil place. Its a sound that drives people to do wild and irrational things. The kind of thing that can disturb your sleep for years. The days here are calm and peaceful. The nights dark and quiet. It's the dawn that brings this loathsome creature to life. Just before the sun creeps over the horizon it's shrill cry pierces the still air. COCK-A-DOODLE-DO it screams. Thats right....theres a fucking rooster in the neighbourhood.  5AM, Saturday and natures most irritating creation is doing what it was created to do.....annoy the hell out of people first thing in the morning. But wait, it gets worse. It seems theres another one further down the valley screaming back at the first one. Two!! How do people put up with this infernal racket every morning? I just can't comprehend  (1)why anybody would own such an annoying animal and (2) why do the neighbours put up with it. Whats the point of feeding an animal whose whole reason for being is to make a hideous noise at an obscenely early time of the morning. It takes me back to an incident that occurred about 20 years ago in a motel in the small town of Kerikeri in New Zealand's bay of Islands. It had been a big night and myself and my mate Shane were slumbering peacefully. Suddenly our rest was violently interrupted. You guessed it...a rooster. Now Shane is a bit of an animal lover and a live and let live sort of a guy. He won't even squash mosquitoes. Karma and all that. So his reaction to this rude awakening came as a big surprise and still amuses me to this day. He leapt up, flung open the slider and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, in this case a size 12 gumboot. Mr Rooster was winding up for wakeup call no.2. COCK-A-DO-AAAAAHHHHKKK he went as the gumboot slammed into him. It was a king hit and we heard no more from Mr. Rooster. On re-awakening at the more civilised hour (9ish) I strolled out to the grassy space outside our room. There in the middle of the garden was a large green gumboot. The only sign of Mr. Rooster was a few brown feathers. It's a good job I am leaving Hatano-cho today as I firmly believe that the only fit and proper thing to do on encountering these pests is to hurl a gumboot at them as forcefully as you can.

For this story I have of course translated the noise of the rooster into English.

Japanese roosters don't say "Cock-a-doodle-doo". 

As any Japanese schoolkid can tell you they say "cock-e-co-co".