The time is precisely 4:10am.

“This is terrible.” I hear David mutter and I think he’s talking in his sleep.  He gets out of bed, paces around a little.

Before he shuts the creaky farm windows,  I am privileged to hear it, too.

A rooster is crowing.  The sound is not unlike an enthusiastic, sixth-grade trumpet player who’s just been given permission to blow into his instrument for the first time.

The very, very bad brass solo is coming from our hen-house.

To bring you up to speed, during the last eight weeks, we have been the novice caretakers of two-dozen or so baby girl chicks.

Or so we thought.

David has led the charge of making the haunted hen-house and chicken yard secure.  He and the boys have spent endless weekend hours shoring up windows and doors, fixing fences and posts, in addition to constructing warm nests and elevated roosts for the girls.

During the coop overhaul, we’ve (me mostly) shed some tears over the loss of three chicks to date, possibly due to the following:

#1. A hawk

#2. A fox (this was the worst, a fox isn’t doesn’t usually hunt chickens for food.  It will just kill the chicken for fun by removing it’s head and leaving the body for you to find.  I won’t include a picture.)

#3 A bad internal chicken GPS (poor gal might still be wandering the eastern shore, who knows?).

But we did not expect to lose a hen due to her being a rooster!

Like I said, we are bumbling along.

I have no idea what we will do, now.  We are gladly take all suggestions.  Especially since there are three other “hens” with similar…er….masculine characteristics.  Let’s hope they prefer another chicken outlet (quiet interpretive dance?  poetry? laying eggs?) to the raucous, pre-dawn, cock-a-doodle-dooing we were privy to this morning.

Because, if I know my very special agent at all, much as he loves his fowl, he is not going to sit by while four young roosters form a cocky, pre-dawn brass band.

Pray for us.