Charles Perkins is not the squeamish type.
As a child, he and the neighborhood boys who grew up around Military Road had a snake club, where they kept and tended to the snakes they pulled, alive, from the pond that is now the parking lot at Lee Park.
His other favorite snake-hunting venue was the old ice plant near Military Road across the street from where his father owned a cafe. Snooping around the corrugated metal that was stacked outside the ice plant, he once captured a particularly large rattlesnake — a four-foot tall boy suddenly had ahold of a five-foot snake, literally more snake than he could handle.
To solve the dilemma, he figured he would transfer possession of the snake to his dad, a strapping 6-foot-4, 260-pound man who was busy at the cafe’s cash register that particular day. Unable to get his dad’s attention by waving at him through the cafe’s picture window, he finally proceeded — dragging the snake along behind him — into the cafe, which was packed with lunchtime patrons.
“Tables overturned, dishes crashes, folks hollering, it was quite the scene,” Perkins recalls.
His dad took the rattler out back and threw him into his huge, deep barbecue pit, then called Dr. Robert Gilbert to ask him if they could “borrow” his king snake. For weeks, the pit out in back of the cafe was one of the biggest attractions in town as the two snakes stalked each other, striking each other, then retreating.
The rattler gave birth to babies. The king snake ate them. Finally, one day the king snake struck the rattler behind the head and didn’t let go, constricting the rattler until it died. Over the period of days, maybe even weeks, the king snake consumed the rattler, an inch or so a day. The neighborhood kids were mesmerized.
I say all this to establish the fact Perkins, 67, is not some city-slicker who is afraid of the natural world and its inhabitants.
The man is not afraid to pick up a live rattlesnake with his bare hands.
Roosters — well, one particular rooster, anyway — is a different matter.
“To be honest, I still kind of flinch a little when I go outside now,” says Perkins, who lives on Park Circle in the same neighborhood he grew up in.
The story began last Sunday morning, when Perkins was performing a favor. A friend had called to say her son, Perkins’ neighbor, had left his cell phone at her house and asked if he would mind delivering a message to her son to let him know about the phone’s location.
Perkins was happy to oblige. His plan was to walk over to the neighbor’s property and slip a note in the windshield wiper on his truck. As he approached the truck, he walked to within a few feet of the rooster, which didn’t seem to pay him any mind. Perkins had seen the rooster before. He says the truck was parked near where he had previously observed the neighbor feeding the rooster.
No big deal. Perkins completed his mission and turned to walk back home, passing the rooster, who remained, well, unruffled, by his presence.
Then, suddenly, Perkins found himself under attack.
“Something was on my head, then on my shoulder. I was scared. I didn’t know what it was,” he said. He managed to beat off his attacker with his umbrella. It was only then that he noticed that the attacker was the rooster.
He sustained some scratches, mainly on his shoulder. When he got home, he told his wife, who — as wives generally do — asked him what he had done to provoke the rooster.
“I couldn’t figure it out,” he says. “The only thing I can think of was, when I came up he must have thought I was coming to feed him. When I turned and headed back home, maybe it dawned on him that I wasn’t going to feed him. I guess he wasn’t happy about that.”
Not happy at all.
Until Sunday, Perkins and his dogs had maintained an uneasy peace with the rooster, who had previously been only a minor annoyance. The rooster, he says, seems to derive great pleasure from taunting his dogs from behind the safety of the fence that surrounds Perkins’ property. The dogs go nuts, of course, which seems to please the rooster to no end.
But since last Sunday’s unfortunate incident, the feud has gotten more personal.
“I go out to the fence line and stick my tongue out at him,” Perkins admits.
The rooster retaliates by crowing, night and day. Perkins is sure he does this out of pure spite. Roosters can be petty that way, he thinks.
Perkins doesn’t know how long the feud will continue. The neighbor, naturally, is reluctant to claim ownership at this point, so the ultimate outcome is uncertain.
The average lifespan of a well-cared for rooster is about 12 years.
The unnatural life span of a rooster is much shorter.
You can only endure being dive-bombed by a rooster so many times, after all.
It is only a passing thought, but do king snakes eat roosters?
Slim Smith is a columnist and a feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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