RIP Wooster the Rooster

A couple of days ago Jo and I came home to find feathers in our yard. A lot of feathers. I hoped that our hens were molting, but I had a bad feeling as Jo called in the chickens. Sure enough - only five showed up. Wooster - our handsome, gentle, protective, not-too-loud rooster was gone. We thought a hawk took him, but today we chased a coyote away from the remaining hens. Maybe he was coming back for seconds? I hate to do it, because they love free-ranging, but we're keeping the hens cooped up until we can come up with a safer situation for them. Their coop is big and has a run so it's not like they're in boxes, but I loved hearing them scratch around in the woods.

As for Wooster, Jo keeps saying things like, "I think he was a happy rooster. He had a good life." I think so too - and now is as good a time as any to share how he got his name. I thought we had shared this long ago, but a quick search of the archives says no. What an oversight!

So - shortly after we got the chickens Jo struggled to come up with names for them all. One day, as Alan and I were building the coop, she came out and announced that she had the perfect name. "Pecker! Because he pecks at me more than the others do." Jo does not like to be laughed at, so we struggled to keep straight faces while we explained that she needed to keep thinking. Her next option? "Cock! Because when he gets older he'll crow cock-a-doodle-doooooo!" Now, what are the odds that the first two names she'd come up with would both be so wildly inappropriate? We told her to keep thinking, and finally she came up with Wooster. "Because we like Jeeves & Wooster and Wooster rhymes with rooster." Good enough for me - Wooster it was.

RIP Wooster the Rooster.