Chapter 181: Damn the Rooster

Editor: nnpdad

It was still zero dark thirty when a local rooster and the barn owl started their domination contest. My bladder had summoned me from a sound sleep but I was hoping to doze for another hour before dawn. No such luck this early morning - the sound of a dominant rooster verbally dueling with a male owl was just enough to keep me from drifting off again; they were both that loud.

That rooster was just reminding all the predators that he was here to protect his flock; I’d seen him and wasn’t interested in picking a bare-knuckle fight with him. He looked to be almost a 20-pounder and had some seriously long and sharp spurs, not the kind of critter you want to mess with. That male owl probably wouldn’t make that mistake. Once the owl came to ground he knew he would be at a definite disadvantage; chickens’ beaks and talons are sharp also, but those spurs are murder if they manage to sink them into you. But all of that considered, the proud owl wasn’t about to retreat from a verbal duel.

I did manage to doze off for a bit after the avian ‘Battle of the Bands’ ended but I doubt if it was more than a dozen minutes before Mouse started nuzzling me as she woke up. Dawn was upon us and the business of the day beckoned.

I had spent the remainder of the day before visiting public houses and other watering holes to recruit recently separated soldiers. It wasn’t my favorite job but it did involve a lot of beer. Which kind of explains my early piss call the next morning. I was focusing on men with families or looking to start a family and asking the same questions that I did before about race and religion. Obviously some people would lie to me and as the years would go by some people would naturally change; I simply didn’t want to start out with any bible thumpers, bigots or out-right racists.

The most important thing was the way they answered the questions or responded to the jokes; the manner of their response really told more than their words. Again, no guarantees, simply a measurable indicator. Considering the era and the continued rise of fundamentalist Christian theology, it was no surprise that acceptance of LGBTQIPAC+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Questioning, Pansexual, Intersex, Asexual, Closeted, and apparently Math Geeks) lifestyles was incredibly rare. It was just a fact that wouldn’t start to change until Hoover started prancing around in high heels and stockings.

Personally, I didn’t care about all that. I maintained my rules of ‘No Sex in Public’ and ‘How do you know they are having sex if you haven’t been peeping through their bedroom window.’ So ‘live and let live’ and much more importantly – ‘Don’t be a peeping Tom.’ With those lines and my anti-racist attitudes firmly in control, I still managed to recruit three good families and while there were no guarantees that they’d stay that way, it was the best I could hope for.