When I was a young minister freshly graduated and ordained, my first ministry in the 1960’s, after seven years of the slums of Newmarket, was in a small country church, in the small country town of Ararat, gateway to the Wimmera in Western Victoria. There I learnt the difficult art faced by all city bred ministers, of becoming a country parson.

When one lives in the country it is not long before one becomes very attached to animals. The animals take on personalities of their own and over the years we have had scores of animals living in our house. Each of our four children became great animal lovers. At one time counting the lizards, the turtle, the white mice, the cat, the dog, the gold fish, the chooks and ducks, the sheep, the birds and a whole range of feathered, finned or furry creatures, I counted up that our four children who were each dependent upon my sole income had 154 mouths dependent upon them.

Laurie the Lamb became an important part of our family as did a collection of dogs, cats and others, but probably the one that persisted and caused us most trouble started in our family in the most innocent way of all. We had been out to Judd’s farm with the children and while visiting in the hen house Geoff indicated that some of the eggs which were in the various nests would be fertile and that if we hatched them, in answer to a question from my young son, they probably would turn out as some hens.

We already had plenty of hens up in our chook shed in the backyard but the possibility of hatching some eggs was too much. So we took home half a dozen eggs.

By this time I had completed my ministry in Ararat although we went back every year for our annual holidays on Judd’s farm. I was now a suburban minister in the Cheltenham Church of Christ, Victoria. Living in a suburban environment, we did not really have the facilities to carry on some of our country practises as far as animals were concerned, but I did have behind the parsonage and alongside the church, a large tract of land that was surrounded by buildings, shops and houses. Because it was behind the church buildings and because we had plenty of other space with our tennis courts, gymnasium and many halls, this vacant area of land became the closest thing you could have to a farm in the inner city. Over the years we had sheep, ducks, chooks, white rabbits, cats, dogs, birds and a host of other creatures, in the vacant block of land surrounded by the church buildings, our manse and nearby shops.

Melbourne’s cold winters meant that we had some good heating and it was over one of the heater vents that a cardboard box, containing half a dozen fertilised eggs, became the maternity ward for our new hens.

Every day the children turned the eggs ensuring that they were neither too hot nor too cold, and there was sufficient moisture around to stop them drying. After the appropriate number of days the first of the eggs began to crack with the emerging life of a young, wet hen. The birth of chickens is always an exciting event for young children and we took every opportunity to talk to them about human reproduction as well as animal reproduction.

The little, yellow, wet chickens soon hatched to the delight of the children. Like all new born hens they were all wet and yellow with the exception of one little hen who had some dark red feathers on her breast. Immediately our children nicknamed this hen “Robin Redbreast”.

The hens were fed mashed grain, some baby cereal and water every few hours and very quickly they grew into the delightful little animals that all young chickens are. Soon they were jumping out of their box and messing around the floor. It was time to relocate them into our hen house at the back of the yard. The children had become immensely involved in the growing lives of the five young hens and they became as dear to us as any little pet can be.

One morning, at twenty to four a.m., I heard the most dreadful sound coming from the hen house and I recognised that some stray dog had gotten into the hen house and was attacking the young chickens. I flew out of bed in my pyjamas and raced through the house. As I went past the laundry I armed myself with a broom and ran across the frosty grass of the back lawn and in through the gate of the hen house ready to attack a neighbour’s rather vicious blue heeler dog that I was sure was responsible for the slaughter. I ran into the hen house and swung the broom ready to attack the dog.

However, no dog was present only a few startled hens. I became conscious that as I stood there in my pyjamas in the pre-dawn cold, wet, chook manure was squeezing up between my toes. And there, on the highest perch was our little hen Robin Redbreast, who was learning how to crow. The blood-curdling noise was nothing less than an adolescent rooster with his voice breaking!

You would be amazed how quickly a young rooster learns to crow.

Within two days his ear piercing crows were waking the whole community in the city streets surrounding us at 4 a.m. By the third day I had at least half a dozen people ask me if the rooster belonged to us with a look of real disapproval in their eye.

Obviously “Robin Redbreast” no longer suited our new operatic star and so we changed his name to “Rodney the Rooster”.

If I had known what was going to happen through the presence of Rodney the Rooster in our family at that point of time I would have readily wrung his neck then and there.

Rodney the Rooster, more than any other pet we have ever had, made an impression upon our community. It seemed only a matter of days when he changed from being a delightful little chicken into a very noisy adolescent rooster. He crowed constantly during the day with his voice getting deeper and louder with the practise. His wings grew with great strength and very soon he was flying over the chook house fence.

Every morning I would trek out into the backyard and try to hush him up. I had already raised the level of the highest perch inside the hen house, having heard of the theory that if you raised the highest perch near to the roof the rooster will stand on the highest perch but because he cannot reach his neck up, will not crow. But Rodney the Rooster disproved that theory from Day One. He grew in bodily weight quickly and ran fast. It was impossible to corner him as whenever I tried to catch him by crowding him into a corner he would fly straight at my face with claws and beak in full attack. Almost immediately he began to grow spurs on the back of his legs and those spurs were sharp. He did not bother flying to the top perch. Now he flew to the topmost point of the chook house. As soon as I wired in part of the hen house to stop him flying out, he forced his way through the wire.

One day, armed with a large sack, I herded him into a corner of the chook house with a pair of sharp scissors sticking in my rear pocket. As I grabbed him I slipped on some wet chook manure and fell full length in the damp of the yard but nevertheless had him within my sacking. He clawed and scratched and bit his way until eventually, half kneeling on top of Rodney the Rooster I clipped the feathers on one wing.

He let his protest be heard all over the area. But I now had a sense of victory. Rodney would be grounded. His wing feathers littered the ground as I released him. Here was another lesson quickly learnt. Rodney did not need two wings with which to fly. Somehow or other he ran across the chook yard and took off on one and a half wings, hurling himself into space over the chook yard fence and straight towards the large window of the Sunday School kindergarten – right for the very centre of it. He hit it as full speed and it smashed to smithereens. Rodney the Rooster then perched himself on the back of a kindergarten chair and crowed in mockery.

I should have quit at this point, or hired a canon, or obtained a blunderbuss, but being a patient and rather kind person I tried to reform Rodney the Rooster.

But to no avail. Every morning before 4 a.m. he awakened our neighbours. With only one and a half wings he flew over fences. He walked around our backyard, the church yard, and into our front garden with absolute authority. One day that blue heeler, seeing him on our front lawn, raced after him barking as if he were a strange sheep which needed to be rounded up. Rodney the Rooster stood his ground and in a flurry of feathers, his sharp spurs jagged into the side of the blue heeler’s lip tearing it badly. His fierceness forced the blue heeler backwards until we separated them. He immediately flew onto a fence and crowed a victory crow.

On one occasion I saw him walking down the centre median strip of the Nepean Highway which ran outside our home. This was one of the busiest highways in Melbourne with 13 lanes of traffic. Sure that the rooster would be killed by a car I crossed over the pedestrian crossing to the median strip and tried to capture him. But Rodney took off and, like a low flying projectile, flew across the entire width of the highway to the safety of our front lawn. However, several cars speeding down the highway, almost being hit by a low flying rooster, veered and swerved and I would not have been surprised if a five car pile up had occurred. Rodney was a menace.

Something had to be done with him. But what? It was close to Easter and I was preaching on Sunday morning concerning the way people over the years have denied Jesus Christ. It was a moving sermon and I was moving to the point where Peter was in the courtyard warming his hands over the brazier. When he was asked if he also was a Galilean and a follower of Jesus, he vehemently denied it. At that point the Scripture says the door of the High Priest’s house was opened and Jesus walked out and turned and looked at Peter and Peter had remembered that Jesus had said he would deny him before the cock crowed. Precisely on cue Rodney started crowing on the fence outside the church windows. Three times he crowed and with each crow the congregation burst into louder laughter. At the end of the third crow they unanimously broke into applause as I said “And before the cock crows thrice you will deny me.”

Unfortunately Rodney did not know how to quit when he was ahead. He just kept on crowing and the rest of that sermon was ruined by the vocal rooster outside the stained glass windows.

It was shortly after that that I asked one of the market gardeners in the congregation if he would like a rooster for his hen house. He did not seem to mind the delinquent behaviour of Rodney and so it was that I took Rodney up to the market gardener’s house and released him in his fowl run.

It was all right for Rodney having fresh fields to conquer, but our children who had nurtured him from the time that he was in the egg, were rather heart broken that I had so mercilessly given away their pet rooster. What they did not realise, of course, was that was the best of many painful options that I had been considering for Rodney.

Two nights later as our children were walking home from the primary school, they noticed this tall handsome rooster proudly strutting through the rows of cabbage in the market garden. It could be no other – it was – Rodney the Rooster! He had flown the coop and was scratching around for juicier feed amongst the cabbages. One of our little children called out his name and Rodney, like an obedient dog, pricked up his head and proudly walked over to the children as they stood beside the barbed wire fence. They offered him pieces of grass and other titbits and when they eventually turned and continued to walk home, Rodney walked home behind them. He had come home to stay.

I was not to be defeated. That night while the chooks and Rodney were on their perches, I crept into the chook house and with a lightning grab, caught Rodney around the ankles, held him upside down, and before he could protest tied his legs with string and put him in a hessian bag. I left him like that all night and the following morning took him back to the market garden with one wing closely cropped. We released him once more into the new hen coop.

When I came home that night Rodney was standing on top of our chook house fence crowing away in absolute delight that once more he had found his way home and to the hens that he loved.

However, a minister who had been a country parson was not to be defeated by one rambunctious rooster. Not long afterwards Jenny Judd, the daughter of our farmer friend Geoff Judd was driving back home to the farm. She had recently taken a job in the city and was living in a high rise housing unit. As she was driving home this particular weekend I asked her if she would mind taking the rooster back to the farm as he had no place in the busy city.

So Jenny came over to our home and after another frustrating attempt at catching Rodney I eventually brought him down with a rugby tackle in the midst of the dampest part of the fowl run. Squawking loudly in protest, I managed to secure his legs and popped him in a large cardboard box with a tight fitting lid for the journey to Ararat.

To my surprise the following day Jenny Judd was on the ‘phone. “Can you come over to my flat and get Rodney?” she asked in a rather plaintive voice. “I cannot keep him here any longer.”

“But what is he doing at your flat?” I asked. “You were going to drive straight up to Ararat.”

Jenny replied, “So I was, but not long after I left your place I had trouble with the car. I took it into a garage and the mechanic told me I could not drive to Ararat until I had the front end fixed. I have a badly shaking front wheel and it needs a new elbow joint or something. So I left the car to be fixed and I carried the confounded rooster home in the cardboard box. I did not know what to do with him so I put him out on my balcony. I put some food in for him and also a bowl of water, and so he would not suffocate I cut some small holes in the lid. This morning, before 4 a.m. I was wakened by his crowing. He had picked at one of the holes and his gotten his head out of the hole and he has been crowing all day. Can you come and get him? Everybody in the flats are really annoyed with me that I am keeping them all awake with this blasted rooster.”

I had no other option. I had to drive over immediately to Kew and from the third storey of a large apartment block take home the noisy Rodney.

You must realise that every time he came back to our home he would continue to crow and my neighbours had reached the end of their tether. Their patience had been exhausted with us as I had promised now on more than four occasion that the Rooster would no longer trouble them. It always seemed that immediately after I had promised I would get rid of the rooster he was back there large as life, greeting the morning and crowing all day.

Now Rodney had come home once more. There was no other option. I either had to cut his head off, which seemed rather a cruel fate simply for a bird who was doing what it was born to do, or else I had to get him out into an area where crowing would not disturb anybody.

We decided to take him up to Judd’s farm ourselves. Cancelling a couple of important meetings I had, we loaded the kids into the car and set off on the 135 mile journey to Ararat where we might release the wretched Rodney the Rooster on the Judd’s farm. The kids were looking forward to spending the night up on the farm before coming back the next day. I had constructed a wood and wire cage and Rodney travelled on the roof of the car. I thought I had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that he would not be blown about by the wind and as we travelled he seemed to be quite content in his air-conditioned roof rack ride.

As I was driving through one of the small towns on the way to Ararat to get rid of Rodney, I glanced in my rear vision mirror to see the flashing blue lights of a police car immediately behind me. I pulled up and slowed down. The officer leant in my window and said, “What is your reason for exceeding the speed the limit in the town?” I got out humbly mumbling apologies as I took out my drivers licence and the policeman wrote the ticket. Standing there crestfallen, conscious that everybody driving past was looking at me, I was feeling in no mood for laughter when, from the top of the car, with his head poking through the wire netting, came the most triumphant choruses of cock-a-doodle-do that you have ever heard. The policeman was quite impressed with the vocal capabilities of our rooster, but I tell you, I could have stuffed him up the tail pipe of the car without the slightest hesitation. I had run out of Christian grace.

Eventually we got him to Judd’s farm, crestfallen and with a $70 fine for speeding.

We released him into the fowl yard just before dusk and immediately there was tremendous consternation. Rodney, his spurs glistening, immediately set about attacking every other rooster on the farm. If you have ever seen two cocks fighting you will know precisely what happened next. It was like mayhem. Feathers and blood flew in all directions as Rodney, with one of his sharp spurs, lacerated one of the older roosters on the farm. The other roosters were all begging to get into the fight also. Geoff looked worried, “This fighting will continue until every one except one is dead. The others are all happy with their pecking order, I’ll have to get Rodney out of it.” With a couple of chaff bags we flailed away at the fighting roosters until eventually Rodney was brought to ground. Geoff had no compunction. “I will just have to kill this fellow” he said, “You had better take the kids up to the house.”

Geoff carried the rooster, with his wings still flapping, by the heels with his head hanging down making raucous protest while I took the kids up to the farmhouse and came back to the chopping block. Geoff knew what to do. Rodney, the crowing, confident, cocksure, triumphant, boasting rooster had to go. He had already used up nine lives.

There was a swift blow from the axe, and Rodney’s noisy head was separated from his body. Geoff hung onto the body on the chopping block because he knew that often a decapitated fowl would start flapping and running even without its head. Rodney beat his wings once or twice then stopped and Geoff let go of his feet. It was almost as if the decapitated rooster had been given a signal to start life again. Rodney took off, running across the ground with blood pumping out of his headless neck, and then with a few flaps of his wings, took off into the air. He flew straight towards the clothes line where Marj had been drying a large double bed quilt! Rodney, minus his head, crashed straight into the centre of the beautiful quilt, spilling and smearing blood all over the centre of it. It was his last triumphant protest against the cruel world. The body fell to the ground and the wings beat a few times more before becoming forever still.

At long last Rodney the Rooster lay quiet. A cruel and sad end to a cocksure, triumphant creature.

We kept the news of Rodney’s last flight from the rest of the family because we did not want the children to be upset. However, there was one farmer’s wife who now faced the prospect of washing a double bed quilt all over again and getting the blood stains from it who was as upset as our children. We had a darkly brooding hen in the farmhouse that night.

After tea the children were full of talk about Rodney the Rooster and his triumphal presence in our family. It was then that our eldest son asked Mr. Judd if he had any more fertilised eggs under any of his chooks. “Not on your life” I declared. “No more chooks being hatched in our place. No more Rodney the Roosters.” The strong determined will power of the country parson, now a city minister of status and authority, however, soon wilted under the plaintive pleas of the little children and a compromise was worked out.

The Judd’s agreed not to give us any more fertilised hens eggs, “But” said Geoff, “I have got some fine duck eggs down there under a duck. She had got a dozen so she would not miss a few and ducklings are no problem.”

I had heard that before but wilted, and so it was that I drove back the following morning to Cheltenham with four fertilised duck eggs in the back seat with the children.

The following morning, Sunday morning, the church service started in the same fashion and the first hymn was:

All things bright and beautiful
All creatures, great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

Whoever wrote that hymn had never met Rodney the Rooster! Glowing colours? A speckled red chest that stuck out with pride. Tiny wings? No, powerful beating wings that thrust his body through the kindergarten window and splattered his life’s blood upon the double bed quilt.

Still the children had their duck eggs, sitting in a cardboard box over the heater vent, and we kept turning them every few hours. I certainly was one father who did not learn from the mistakes of the past. If I had known what would then happen with the duck eggs, we would have had omelets that night. But that is another story!

That night in my study I spent some time writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower noting down the events of another day as a suburban minister.

GORDON MOYES

Thursday, 7th April, 2005, 11:58 am | A Suburban Minister, Australian Short Stories