Life and Times With Boc-Boc: a fiend most fowl
A story of life in a rural setting, and the bittersweet taste of revenge.
Location: Oregon
…bear with me: this tale (like most I tell) deserves some backstory…
I was born and raised in a pretty small rural town, within a geographically isolated area. Now, although one couldn’t necessarily say my family “homesteaded” in the strictest sense, initially we trod about as close to that line as possible without actually crossing over: much of the first year of our residency upon the undeveloped property was spent “camping” without electricity or running water. At first we stayed in a makeshift camp in the trees, and then moved into a hastily erected garage as a temporary solution until we could manage to build a house proper. It needs to be mentioned here that “we” never did manage to get past this preliminary step; so essentially, my childhood was spent living in an 20’x22’ “garage (although over the following years it did begin to resemble what one might conceive of as an actual house). Next in a long series of improvements were connection to the electrical grid, the drilling of a well (the chore assigned to my brother and myself -while still in grade school- of laying and burying that well line is a story in and of itself), and then connection to a “party line” phone network. Installation of a woodstove and insulation of the exterior walls and roof were the next necessary additions, although interior walls and modern amenities such as sheet-rock, carpeting, and a front porch would ultimately have to wait for a much later inclusion on the “chore” list: priorities came first.
Raising children in such ‘primitive’ conditions might be deemed by some in this increasingly ‘modern age’ as “irresponsible” or “abusive” even, but truth be told, we (well, my brother and I at least) didn’t really know any different: it was only when a grade-school chum would come over to visit that it could get a bit awkward. The most obvious example of just such unease was when someone wanted to use the bathroom, only to find out we didn’t actually have one. For bathing at home (for instance), we 1/2 filled a horse trough with heated water from the tap and/or woodstove which, when finished, we then emptied in the woods outside (my brother and I also habitually used the school gym facilities before and/or after school). The brushing of teeth, as well as any “primping and/or prepping” was all done at the one sink that resided in the 1/4 space generally designated as ‘kitchen.’ And, if one felt the need to “heed the call of nature,” depending on the specific nature of that need (generally further informed by “gender”) one could either choose a discrete bush, or our undeniably pink outhouse up the trail. How a visitor might react to such choice carried more weight than our young, naive minds could readily conceive at the time: for many it meant they would never visit again.
As you might have already gathered, life and times for us in the rural 1970’s were pretty challenging: it was a hardscrabble life. People in our immediate vicinity (distanced 20 miles further up in the woods from the nearest rural city) relied on each other out of utmost necessity; my father was a mechanic at the time, so when pressed he might barter from another some service that we needed in lieu of hard cash. Likewise, such “common sense solutions” affected most every interaction within our tight-knit and interdependent community. All the kids in my “neighborhood” had chore lists that were more akin to a sentence of “hard labor.” This simple fact cannot be so easily judged, however, by those of more “modern” sensibilities, far from it: it was simply a matter of survival. It also taught me a profound lesson, one that I will never forget and sincerely wish more shared: “we are all in this together” (although it did take me a few more decades before I fully understood just how broad the concept of “we” actually was). To this day whenever I hear a chainsaw running, my first instinct is “…to go help them with their firewood…” as one raised within such an interdependent community quickly learns that a neighbor who has received your help is more likely to return the favor.
In the spirit of just such community exchange, at some point before/around when I entered school, we started receiving chickens (from where or whom I couldn’t tell you) as means of payment or thanks for some act of kindness. Concerned over the appetites of local predatory wildlife, we built them a coop and then a run consisting of posts and hog fencing, which we then liberally swaddled with chicken wire. However, after many a sleepless night hearing “hens in distress” and then finding the scant remaining evidence indicating their mortal demise at the maw of raccoon, coyote, or wild cat, it was determined that we needed a proper guardian to at least allow the poor cluckers a fighting chance (and actually begin to benefit from their assigned chore of egg laying). So dad put the word out through the local grapevine, and not long thereafter came home with a grizzled and battle tested veteran: a rooster who someone rather uncleverly named “Boc-Boc.”
Now, I can’t tell you exactly what must have occurred on the drive home between my dad and that rooster; my childish imagination creates dramatic action-sequences of flying feathers, spraying blood, the flash of glittering spurs, taunting, crowing, cursing, and ultimately the resounding victory of an iron-hewn, larger than life hero. All I know is that from the moment that accursed fowl arrived at our house, the two of them shared what might be called a “special connection.” It was almost as if a war for supremacy over the flock had been waged, and dad had somehow managed to assume the crown of the Alpha. Given time it was almost as if Boc-Boc both accepted and flourished in his designated role as “second in command” (although that still didn’t stop him from attempting a mutiny now and again): whenever dad would walk out of the house, that rooster would run up near to his side and ‘heel’ as a dog might, cooing and clucking while following him (as warranted by his rank) just a few steps back. At times dad would pick Boc-Boc up and stroke his feathers as one would a cat’s fur, and that fowl from hell would just close its eyes and become completely docile as if lost in bliss, so much so that one could almost imagine it purring. On weekday mornings, dad would routinely get up, pour himself some coffee (adding a nip of Bailey’s if it was cold), go out to the truck to start and warm it, and then go back inside to stoke up the fire, get himself ready for work, etc. And every morning when he went back out to the truck to leave, that rooster would be standing in the bed, just like a loyal hunting dog. Dad would grab hold of him and toss him into the nearest undergrowth, jump in the truck and peel off down the dirt driveway, only to have that fleet-legged fowl run him down and jump in the bed again. Again and again they repeated this process on down the driveway, until Boc-Boc (either due to exhaustion or having exceeded his effective ‘territory’) would finally give up the game until the next morning’s play. This forced dad to leave home earlier for work, but it seemed a sacrifice he readily accepted (like I said, the 2 of them shared a “special” bond). Sometimes dad came home before dark (this was a rarity; at the time his round trip commute, without ‘after work diversion,’ was about 100 miles) and one could witness that rooster suddenly “perk up,” crow, and then go tearing down the driveway where he would next be seen riding in the truck bed as dad pulled up. It was all quite peculiar, even to a child who didn’t necessarily know any better. Dad loved that stupid bird.
Regardless, for the rest of us, life with that creature was an unending nightmare. As there seemed to be room for only one ‘master’ in his little lizard brain, he perceived anything else as a clear and present danger to his flock, and therefore treated the rest of us with extreme prejudice. Being both stubborn and generally unruly himself, dad was the only one who could manage to get him into the pen at night, and that only worked so long as the rooster didn’t just decide to break his way out and ‘fly the coop.’ Consequently, most nights would find him roosting in an oak tree by the front door, keeping an ever watchful eye upon his girls. In addition, any time he perceived a light source (real or imagined) from the house or woods at night, he would start crowing as if eagerly welcoming the dawn of another day for torment. Whenever mom tried to get into the hen house to gather eggs, he would immediately come to the defense; and thereafter a pitched battle would ensue, mom armed with a broom attempting to unseat her opponent, all while trying to gather the delicate clutch into her basket. Boc-Boc almost always managed a successful counter-strike regardless, as she then retreated (with the hard fought treasure her most pressing concern at that point) back into the safety of the house. My brother was also subject to such torments, as any entering and exiting the house was ever within the gaze of Boc-Boc’s fowl eye. However, being larger of stature, the first born, and more prone to be following in the wake of dad’s predilections, he seemed to receive less ire from the rooster. Perhaps the shrewd old bird recognized the line of descent of the first-born; the order of succession, and thereby begrudgingly granted due respect to the heir of the Alpha. But this matter of assumed privilege did not assure his ultimate safety, not even in the slightest.
Over time, we did learn that Boc-Boc generally seemed to be a creature of habit. If one could manage to escape into the relative safety outside his patrol zone, one could manage to find some peace; although to be safe it was best if one’s ears became trained to maintain constant vigil for the unmistakable sounds of a renegade rooster in pursuit. Because of this constant looming threat, whenever we had ‘free’ time from chores, our local friends began to ask us to come over to their house, or alternatively, to meet in the old walnut orchard that separated us from the other 1/2 dozen houses in the neighborhood (originally built by those who used to work the massive Limestone quarry on the mountain up behind us). Among the locals, our house became rather widely known for its “attack chicken.” Errant uninitiated hippies (there was a commune less than a mile from our house) who lost their way onto our property would quickly learn to rue the day if they wandered too close: a face full of feather, beak and spurs was a lesson not easily forgotten.
I perhaps suffered the most under the tyrannical spur of this primeval horror. I was (until a radical growth spurt my freshman year) quite diminutive in size: my childhood memory regarding ‘scale’ between myself and that damnable bird is that we were near equal in height. Lacking any such means of intimidation regarding height or girth, and having yet to build up a size-able enough reserve of “ornery,” I was nearly at the complete mercy of Boc-Boc (and if you haven’t figured it out by now, he hadn’t any, only respect for the chain of command). He seemed to actually go to great lengths in order to assert his authority over me: one minute I would be wandering the dark woods, lost in some childhood induced fantasy world, in the next stark reality would descend upon me in a feathered fury. My only escape was found in the relative safety of an ever widening walkabout, or within the womb-like confines of the house. The worst part of this existential hell, however, was when I had to use the outhouse.
Initially mom would first gird me in a protective layer, and then escort me -broom in hand to dispatch the enemy- to the relative safety of the outhouse where I would finish my business and then be warily escorted back. As this routine also needed to be repeated regardless of the call of nature, this quickly became a tedious and tiresome task for my mother. At some point where patience came to an end, an executive decision was made: I must learn a way to deal with this problem myself. When that trial by feather inevitably came, I was once again girded, and then handed the broom and unceremoniously hastened quickly out the door. The first dozen or so times this new method was attempted did not go well for me, I must say. I quickly realized that the broom did nothing more than slow me down, so I would use it first as an initial ranged attack to divert the oncoming charge. Then I would turn heel and run as if my life depended on it (I was pretty sure it did, anyway) toward the distant pink structure of relief and refuge. Usually my desperate, clumsy spear throws were hasty and well wide of the mark and so my panic would become fully realized as both beak and spur would be felt upon my backside before I finally managed to enter sanctuary. As if to make things worse, once inside, I would then hear the steady terrifying battle chant of “…braaawk…baawk…bawk-bawk.” pacing circles around my pink fortress of solitude. Once I was finished and managed to build my courage up again, a similar frantic dash was required to return to the house. Over time (and through this rather slow process of self-encouragement), I learned that if one waited long enough, the voice of the tormentor could be heard to slowly wander off and became distant; whereupon if one was cautious and very sneaky, one could then make it most the way back before a squawk was heard, a flash of red cockle seen, a homely, grizzled old rooster suddenly exploded out from some nearby undergrowth and the chase would be resumed again in earnest. Using this more patient tactic however, granted me just enough of a head start that I soon grew increasingly confident that I had outsmarted that cocksure villain at last.
…but I had underestimated the twisted cunning of my adversary.
One fateful day, seeming like any other in recent memory (I had by then become quite confident in my chances of both outwitting and then outrunning the rooster) I once again made the successful feint/dash to the outhouse, finished my “business,” then again waited ever so cleverly with my ear to the door to complete yet another successful bathroom adventure. Soon enough, like clockwork, I heard the vocalizations recede and go quiet. Peeking out, I scanned the area in immediate view for any signs of movement, any flash of bright red cockle, and seeing none I stepped out and started the careful, quiet creep back to the house…when suddenly I heard the swift approach of an evolved velociraptor in pursuit: within seconds I was enveloped within a maelstrom of beak, feather and spur (and I swear to this day that there was a triumphant crowing to accompany this successful sneak attack). My newly found confidence and rational became completely unhinged: having become the prey once again, I chose flight. I ran blindly, my complete and total panic driving my feet with no sense of direction or purpose other than to just “RUN!” I’m not sure how long I ran for exactly, but at some later point mom found me and managed to beat the smug champion off of my pecked, spurred and humiliated self before ushering me at long last back into the safety of the house. She did her best to soothe me, but the horror of horrors had already been experienced, and would not be forgotten then, nor ever again.
As the following weeks passed, it confirmed we had once again found ourselves back at the beginning of the struggle. It seems that Boc-Boc was indeed a highly intelligent, wily (but most assuredly evil) creature, as he had taken a lesson from my most recent victories, and hatched his own variations on the theme: he had conceived a plan to also wait quietly, remaining close but altogether out of sight, until I would emerge once again. Then he would shrewdly wait even longer, until he saw the perfect moment to strike: such as when I became distracted and my glance turned away, or when my steps became less cautious and more relaxed, or when he could take advantage of cover to approach unseen and attack from some unexpected direction. One time I remember turning to see him literally stalking me closely and quietly from behind, seemingly awaiting the most exquisite moment to launch into his torment. I’ve come to believe that it was precisely this that truly motivated him: the strategy of the pursuit, and the humiliating defeat of your enemies. It wasn’t much longer before this newly evolving situation became untenable. He had learned too much, too quickly: he had evolved into a monster. Not only were my brother and I subject to newer, constantly escalating threats from this terror, Boc-Boc had become so emboldened that mom could hardly make it into the hen house to get eggs anymore. My mom Finally laid down the law; “…that damned rooster has got to go.”
Dad however, couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He listened intently, patiently, but couldn’t understand why his pet, his friend (and second in command no less) was so widely disliked. Undeterred, Mom continued the press, and dug in her heels. Eventually, realizing that this was an argument he just couldn’t win (and perhaps influenced by my now constant wide-eyed, 1000 yard stare), dad finally relented. However, his loyalty to his 2nd in command remained steadfast: instead of dispatching the rooster outright by firing squad or any number of other equally satisfying military punishments (he was, after all, very good at all things rooster-related) perhaps we might instead give him to one of the neighbors to protect their hen house? After further discussion (and more furious scolding from mom) this compromise was agreed upon, just so long as Boc-Boc never found his way back to our property, ever. The matter finally settled, dad gathered up his boon companion the next morning, and took him to a willing neighbor’s house down the road. There was still some concern between my brother and I regarding whether or not the rooster might manage to successfully migrate back across the orchard (and if wandering too far afield might increase the risk of an unprovoked attack), but at least we felt relatively safe again within the vicinity of our own acreage.
Due to Boc-Boc now residing at our closest friend’s house, we stopped going over there altogether for our “free” time: we would all meet as per normal in the orchard, or alternatively they might decide to now come over to our house instead. But I for one wanted to remain as far from that spawn of hell as possible for the rest of my foreseeable days, and usually chose to remain close to home. This general scenario lasted somewhere around two weeks before we got the not so surprising news: “Boc-Boc is dead.” It seems two weeks of being unable to get into the hen house was more than long enough for some locals. Imagine my glee to hear that my greatest childhood adversary spent his last moment of life giving the “evil chicken eye” to the receiving end of a shotgun. Within days of this joyous news came yet more: “Would we like to come over for some chicken stew?” My still traumatized brain could only form one thought to match the joy and relief of closure felt within my young heart: “YES.” And although I can’t say it was the best chicken stew I’ve ever had from a pure culinary perspective, It was perhaps one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten…so in this one particular case at least, I must disagree with the more commonly used phrase and declare quite confidently instead:
“…revenge is a dish best served hot.”
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