Thankful the Rooster Crows

We live near some farms, vineyards mostly. Some of them have roosters. Unlike how they are portrayed in cartoons, roosters do NOT wake up just before dawn, quietly clear their throats, take a deep breath, and then let out one loud glorious er--er-er--er-ERRRRR just as the sun first drips over the horizon. No,roosters actually start before dawn and crow and crow for quite a while after the sun is up. This is especially true if there is more than one rooster, because then they do a little back and forth deal between them.

I was on the front porch early this foggy morning listening to the roosters and smelling the air since it rained last night. Just as I began to think about what I might do to the roosters if I had a BB gun and a clear line of sight between me and them, my mind wandered again. I thought about that fact that there have been farms with roosters for a long time. Even a hundred years ago. Then I realized that a hundred years ago was 1908, and that didn't seem so long ago. But there were roosters on farms 200 years ago, too. And all this time, those roosters have been crowing. And during bad times, maybe people were glad to hear the rooster crowing because it meant that nobody had to eat the rooster, and the rooster hadn't starved.

Then all of a sudden the crowing sounded just as nice as the air smelled. So I sat a little while longer on the porch in front of the house I get to call mine, even though Wells Fargo really owns it. And I listened and breathed in and out.

Then automatic sprinklers came on simultaneously at three nearby houses because people didn't reset their timers after a recent power outage, so I got up and went inside.

Happy Thanksgiving!