Courtesy Audrey Pavia
Mr. Mabel the cock escorts one of his biddy around the urban farm .
Whoever said chivalry is deadened never spend any fourth dimension around roosters . Sometimes I just ca n’t get over how gracious and doting roosters are with their hen .
At my urban farm , Mr. Mabel is the top roo ( exhaust out his brother Mr. Molly , at least this year ) . Mr. Mabel deserves to be the guy in charge because nothing is as important to that rooster as his five hens .
Mr. Mabel spend much of his twenty-four hour period reckon for good material to consume . Not for himself , mind you , but for his girls . If he add up upon some grubs in the dirt or if I toss out a piece of fruit on the lawn , he marshal the ladies like only a rooster can : by dipping his head and making a trenchant clucking strait that is only used for such an social occasion . The hens know precisely what this means , and they come running from every charge to see what their man has found for them .
This ritual is particularly telling on the rarified occasion when I take home a container of mealworms . I sit down on the ground and call Mr. Mabel , who runs over , sees that a mealworm feast is about to come about , and start to call his seraglio . When they come running , he feed them , deal each mealworm from my hand and placing it in front of a hen . What ’s so amazing is that he will reach out at least 10 mealworms to the girls before wipe out one himself . And I know how much he make out mealworms . But the ladies come first .
Mr. Mabel is also a guy you could calculate on in time of trouble . If I shake up one of the hens as she attempts to hatch an egg in the coop ( not allowed — we do n’t need any more chickens ) , the loud beef of objection promptly gets the attention of Mr. Mabel . He number running as tight as he can to see what is going on , and get in my infinite . He does n’t know what it is I ’m doing to turn over his peeress , but it does n’t count . She ’s in suffering and he ’s the man on the job .
Of of course , all this dashing doings come with a price . When Mr. Mabel is in the mood for lovemaking , “ no ” is not an satisfactory solution . The hens have learned that if they want first dibs at the mealworm and someone to deliver them when time are tough , they want to make it worth his while . And they do , with seldom a complaint .
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