We’re down to one rooster now.

Something ate one of the chickens when they were all in the relative safety of the coop, and I guess they all stopped trusting the efficacy of the sanctuary.

The chickens flew the coop.

And then the polar vortex blew into town, and one by one, the chickens and remaining rooster herd fell prey to the environment and a really fat raccoon.

There isn’t much that won’t eat a rooster given the chance.

I might even eat a rooster…given the chance.

This raccoon, I saw him on the porch, reaching up for the remaining rooster, but he sauntered off when I turned on the porch light.

He sauntered off slowly, glancing back over his shoulder as if to say, “We’ll finish this later. You haven’t seen the last of me…”

So now we’re down to one last rooster.

Now we’re down to the tough guy bully of the bunch.

The one who chased the sweet rooster off the porch railing when all the other chickens relocated.

The one who sent sweet rooster to his death by abducting his throne.

So the one who is left…or was left, I haven’t heard him crow this morning…is/was, we’ll see…both smart and scared.

He knows/knew (we’ll see) what’s coming for him.

It’s a slow-moving coon who understands the limits of a rooster’s night vision.

It’s a slow-moving coon who said, in best Terminator Coon fashion, “I’ll be back”.

He’s smart …and he’s scared…but I think that the proportions have blown way out of whack.

He’s more scared than smart at this point.

I left the door to the lower porch open a couple of days ago, and when I came back inside, the rooster was up on the washing machine.

(Our laundry area is on the lower enclosed porch.)

When I went to grab him to put him back outside, he defecated.

That the main problem with that rooster. I don’t mind him being on the porch occasionally, but I don’t like the defecation part of the deal all that much.

I can’t have a bunch of rooster defecation where we do the laundry.

I can’t have any rooster poo where we do the laundry. That just won’t fly with me.

We have a new baby….I don’t want to have to clean up rooster defecation all the time….too.

Anyway, the point of the story, and I got sidetracked with the rooster poo stuff, is that, although he’d come into the laundry room before, he’d never worked at carving out his territory like he did that day.

He’d never asserted himself by flying up on to the washing machine like that.

I believe that his fear made him assertive.

From what I gather, a rooster isn’t really all that smart. I don’t believe that their little rooster head holds a very powerful brain.

I don’t know how to find out how smart a rooster is. I “can’t know” if a rooster thinks about much.

Knowing “how smart a rooster is” is above my pay grade. I don’t think that I can even “google” it and get a definitive answer.

But this rooster seems to have a plan.  He’s going to ride this whole coon thing out in the relative safety of an enclosed laundry room porch…get up high on the washing machine, sleep in safety, terrorize the cat, and avoid that fat raccoon every night until another morning comes and he’s safe in his solitude once again.

Every single one of his “purposes” is gone now, though.

What’s he got to live for, anyway?