The Roosters

by Charley Foster

Who knows what sets them off in the middle of the night, hours before
the dawn. It begins with the scream of a single rooster and undulates
across the landscape as neighboring roosters join in the mass
assertion of territorial and hierarchical dominance. It creeps up on
you lifting you from sleep; a tsunami begun somewhere on a distant
hill in a distant patch of jungle spreads in expanding rings, snapping
awake each blinking rooster who raises his head in turn to add his own
voice as the cacophonous wave floods past. Does it begin with a single
epicenter, like a stone dropped into a pool, or do they commence
spontaneously all over the island like raindrops.

One imagines all the chickens on the island have added their voices
before they are through. Why would it stop before they have all heard
and responded. Maybe it goes all around the island several times,
like a crowd in a stadium doing the wave at a sporting event. It seems
that way some nights.