Sad Chickens

Talking on the phone yester-morning with my old friend, gay chess buddy, mildly Tourette's-syndrome-afflicted Douglas H., who now lives in northeastern California, but who lived for some time, in years past, in Hawaii. While we were talking, the feral chickens who live in the park-space under my east-facing window, next to the animal shelter here in Honolulu (in a situation not unlike that of the feral but pettable cats that live in the gardens of the Villa Borghese next to the zoo in Rome) were making the kind of distressed noises that chickens (roosters anyway) make on drizzly days: a discouraged, never quite finished or exactly repeated, but continually re-commenced version of their usual sunny-day "cockadoodle-doo."  I asked Douglas if he could "hear my cock" over the phone. He said he could.  

"You'll notice," I said, "that they don't seem to be saying 'Cockadoodle-doo' at all."

"That's because," said Douglas, "they were brought there by Filipinos and the Portuguese and Malaysians as fighting cocks.  They don't say 'Cockadoodle-doo,' they just kind of cry."

"¡Fucking barbarians!"

"Yes."