Tony Deyal | Cock-a-doodle-do

One of my colleagues on Facebook posted, “Kamamega woman sent away after eating chicken part meant for husband”. The story was that of a 32 year-old woman in Matungu which is (wait for this) in Kakamega County, Kenya. My first thought was asking, “Kenya believe this?” Unfortunately, the men in Kakamega don’t joke when it comes to their rights,, and sometimes, when they are as angry, their lefts as well. Men in Kakamega have exclusive rights to eating drumsticks and gizzards and when the man’s wife ate his, he sent her packing. In other words, he preferred the chicken to the chick.

What made me even more interested is that, immediately after the Kakamega kicked out his wife from the marriage, the online group, Medium Daily Digest, came up with ‘ASAP Fables Online: Timely Parables Abbreviated for a Busy Age’ by Philip Heckman in Jane Austen’s Wastebasket. I took a look. One was ‘The Gyre Down Under’ in which a flash flood created a raging vortex that sucked a platypus from her poorly built riverbank burrow into an irresistible death spiral. The moral of the story was, “A clockwise path that does not always lead to clockwisdom. Try the other way around.” There were other “morals” about animals like the Grasshopper, Millipede, a Snake Who Stripped, a Dung Beetle who collected fine art, and ‘The Ass in the Window’. The Ass, after a drunken night of living up to his reputation, found himself locked out of his house. Trying to enter through a window, he became stuck - head in and tail out. The next morning, his neighbours cheerfully declined to free him, preferring to face his stink rather than his stupidity. I thought of going further with the Ass as a jack of all trades, but it was not my trip. I am not so assiduous that I would spend time on an asteroid or an ass-to-ride, for that matter. I decided to haul my ass for another story I liked more – a Cock and His Comb.

A cock was so proud of his brightly coloured comb that he strutted around the barnyard all day showing it off. When the other animals’ responses failed to satisfy him, the Cock crowed all night, demanding their round-the-clock adulation. In the morning, the angry, sleepless farmer beat the noisy Cock soundly, then delivered his lifeless body to the cook. Even though the Cock was behaving like Donald Trump, and I expected the moral of the story to follow suit, I was wrong. I even assumed that the response would be like the ancient bald man who still carried his old comb in his pocket wherever he went. He just couldn’t part with it. In this story, the moral was “ Coq au vin is the sincerest form of flattery. Coq au vin (rooster/cock with wine) is a French dish of chicken braised with wine, lardons, mushrooms, and optionally garlic.” I was so surprised that I decided to go online to see what the original ‘Cock’ story was. As we say in some of the Caribbean countries, “Who tell me to do that?”

STUNNED AND EMBARRASSED

I found a page with “My first … And favourite cock”, then “Seeking a cock for the first time” followed by “My favourite cock” and even, “My Best Friend’s Cock”. When I looked closer, I was stunned and embarrassed. I found myself in ‘Literotica’ which is a free erotic fiction website with 2.5 million people. I definitely did not make it 2.51 and, after clearing my head, I headed back to where the air was clear, crisp and rarefied. In the process, I found that the language was very context dependent. If you say, “That a beautiful looking cock” versus “The cock crows” or “The cock fight was bloody and vicious”, in the first one, most people would probably laugh and think of sex. The others (for the most part) would know that you were talking about the animal. However, you can’t always be sure. A truck driver was speeding down a country road and ran over a rooster. Being an honest man, he walked to the farmhouse and knocked on the door. An old man opened the door. “Sir”, the trucker said, “I would like to replace your rooster.” “Suit yourself,” the old man said. “The chickens are out back.” In fact, it could be worse. One friend, having asked me what was my topic for this week, immediately responded when I told him it was about cocks: “What’s the difference between a joke and three cocks? My sister can’t take a joke.”

At this point, I walked away, crossed the street to get away from him, and yet he shouted at me laughing at my behaviour, “Why did the rooster cross the road?” He answered himself, “So Tony could prove he isn’t a chicken!” A few other people stopped to listen and my friend was happy like pappy, “Answer me, why did the rooster cross the road for the second time?” My friend gave us the answer, “Tony leave me and went across because he saw a sign that says, ‘Chicken strips for a dollar’.” Then he added loudly, “And you know that Tony went back again. He heard there were some pretty hot chicks at KFC!” I shouted back, “Don’t lie. I crossed the road because I wanted to see a chicken strip!” Then I added, “But I bet you don’t know why the rooster went back across the road?” My friend had turned his back and was leaving quickly. As he started running, I let him have it, “Which day of the week do chickens hate most?” Then I shouted, “A Fry-day! And you are like the real rooster who ran away. He was chicken and you are worse than one!”

Had my friend actually spoken to me about roosters and treated both me and the animals with the respect we both deserved, I would have told him why I found them worth having. Sports medical physicians recommend rooster-comb injections as an affordable alternative to costly, risky knee surgery. The total average cost for a knee replacement in the United States is somewhere between $15,000 and $75,000. The average cost of a complete rooster comb injection is just over $1,000. Of course, this is not my only reason for putting roosters ahead of the other animals. Cats are catastrophic and they stay far from religion because they’re scared of dogma. Dogs chase their own tail and not just for trying to make both ends meat. It is true that the term “cuck” is a slang for “cuckold”, which refers to a man whose wife is unfaithful and has a “horner” man. But still, they are so important that instead of ‘chip off the old block’ I prefer ‘Chip of the old Cock]. Instead of ‘Rock and roll’, I go for ‘Cock and roll’. More, if you find yourself ‘between a rock and a hard place’, you should strongly consider putting yourself ‘between a Cock and a hard place’.

Tony Deyal was last seen asking, “How do you stop a rooster from crowing on Sunday morning?” Eat him Saturday night. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com