Cap't Jack

He came, he saw, and he conquered.

Hello! I am so glad you let Wuzzles and Snippets back into your inbox! Your generous responses to the last installment left me awash in a glow of humble happiness. May the spelling gods and grammar fairies keep hanging out with me awhile longer.

This is a story of consequences and luck. And a gentle reminder that having hens in the back garden IS lovely…until you think about the fate of the rooster.

Enter Cap’t Jack. A rooster of un-paralled aplomb and un-equalled fierceness. Seriously, look at that beak! And that eye!

A few years ago, if anyone had ever suggested that I might have a love affair with a rooster, I would have raised a ragged eyebrow. But that was then. Now I would bow to the inevitability of such a possibility.

Cap’t Jack marched purposefully into our lives in June of 2016. He was one of two roosters who had been, we presume, unceremoniously dumped in our neighbourhood. That, or they had made a break for it and scampered onto a rather busy ‘country’ road to try their chances of life without stew pots. We would see these two tentatively wandering up lane ways, hanging out at gates, disappearing into the woods across the way. Occasionally one or other would be at our gate and I would waggle my finger in the direction of the next farm along the road. “Down that way are hens, try there”

And then feel wretched. Why there instead of here? Our lives were already complicated, we didn’t have hens and we knew nothing about roosters, nothing. But still.

Weeding in the garden often had me thinking about those two roosters. Neither of us had seen them for a few days and we hoped that they had settled in someplace and found welcome somewhere, purposefully removing all thoughts of the more likely scenario that they had become dinner for something in the woods.

As things turned out, one of those abandoned roosters decided to move in with us, despite the alure of free ranging hens down the road.

One morning, Cap’t Jack landed with thump in the vegetable garden, feathers awry and a beady glint in his eye. How he had negotiated the six foot fence surrounding the farm (necessary in the early days for keeping the four-wheelers out and keeping our irascible hounds in) is a mystery. But there he was. Proud, loud and charming!

With alarming speed, our days began to circle around the needs of Cap’t Jack (so named as his preferred spot to roost was on the keel of an upside down rowboat in our barn). He followed us everywhere, burbling with delight when finding termites in the wood pile, discovering grubs in the garden beds or being offered Tiny Tim Tomatoes off the vine.

When he wasn’t helping out in the garden, he explored our big barn with the eye of a professional, wandering along the beams, poking into corners, hopping up and down the stairs, inspecting the boat building progress with head cocked and chest puffed out. Eventually his wobbly flights came to an end (sadly these birds have been bred to become bigger than their wing span can support) and he could no longer make the short distance up onto the keel. After a somewhat awkward and embarrassing flight fail, he picked the third step down from the top of a staircase of seventeen as his new roost. It was a sweet bit of real estate… great views and the perfect width for his rather large body. Every evening at precisely the same time, he would walk, skip, hop up the stairs, settle himself and not move until morning.

The days with Cap’t Jack were often hilarious. He took a rather territorial view of our farm, and if he heard a vehicle arriving, he would run down the hill from the gardens with reckless abandonment towards the gate, wings outspread and his great feet whacking the ground as he went. Friends refused to get out of their cars, and would look quite startled whenever the Cap’t rose up off the ground all feathers fully extended, beady eye briefly glaring at them through their car window before landing in a swirl of dust to put on one threatening pose after another for their benefit. We had a spell for a bit with no visitors. The word was out.

Winter arrived and Cap’t Jack would wake up in the morning, saunter down his stairs and walk over to our smaller barn where we both live and work. If there was snow on the ground Thomas would obligingly carry him as Cap’t Jack made it very clear that snow was not on his list of ‘must do’ experiences. He would settle himself down in front of the wood burning stove while we slung back our morning coffee, preening himself and doing a lot of rooster yoga … leg stretches, wing stretches, impossible contortions while sorting out his tail feathers. We were smitten. I mean, when a rooster pops up onto your lap when you are reading a book, does it actually get any better than that?

By the time spring arrived the following year, Cap’t Jack had grown into a very gorgeous fellow. And a very big fellow. With hormones. Almost overnight he went from being Mr. Mellow to being Mr. Fierce. The number of times he trapped me in the outhouse, in the kitchen, in the donkey barn, in the hay barn, in the loft… countless. There was nowhere I could hide from the Captain. I discovered that I could not outrun a rooster either downhill OR uphill. I could not race up stairs faster than a rooster, I could not jump the fence faster, and there were no hiding spots he hadn’t sussed out. My eyeballs were constantly stuck on startled and my nerves were shot six ways to Sunday.

This was a dilemma. The Captain was family. And we loved him.

We tossed a zillion ideas around. Nothing felt right. We conferred with rooster experts, we read everything on line (that was a mistake!), we thought about clicker training, thigh high boots for protection, getting him a stuffed hen for companionship…

Finally, and with great reluctance we started looking for a safe and loving home for him. While at the local feed store, I tentatively asked if they knew of anyone who would be liking a fierce rooster with the caveat that he was NEVER to become someone’s dinner. The feed store was busy and loads of gnarled old fellows were there having a pretty good chuckle at my dilemma. And no, nobody was stepping up to the plate (unless the rooster was on it).

I turned to go when a tall, kind looking woman said clearly “You have a rooster you need a home for? We’re looking for a rooster!” I will not lie. I burst into tears right there.

And so it was that our Cap’t Jack found himself a beautiful home with his own flock of hens to look after. We drove him to Salt Spring Island with two pots of Tiny Tim Tomatoes and his house flag, the Jolly Roger. Laughing Apple Farm welcomed him with open arms and open hearts. He is still there and he is a GrandPa! Mary tells us that he has been an excellent rooster and as he has aged he has reverted to his sweet gentle self although he did strike terror into more than one farm intern over the past five years! Now the hens groom him and he gets his food and water served to him wherever he is sitting. The Jolly Roger still flies above the hen house. Our gratitude is endless.

p.s. The stories of Cap’t Jack could fill a slim volume, this is a very condensed telling of his tale. It’s possible a few more of his stories may show up in future exposes of life on this tiny vegan farm.