Dooster and Gruster

We moved into Rainbow Farm and found a small flock of wild chickens living there. Not ordinary chickens gone wild, but fighting chickens gone wild. A pretty rooster and a flock of plain hens. We moved our flock of Reds a few days later and the battles began. The big Red rooster, named Dooster, was immediately challenged by the wild rooster that came to be named Gruster. They fought several battles over several weeks, always to a draw. Dooster was much bigger and heavier and Gruster was faster and bred for fighting. Both had prodigious spurs.

One cold afternoon we came home from work and noticed Gruster just sitting in the yard. Dooster was no where in sight. Odd. We walked up to Gruster and noticed a couple of things: he didn't run away; he had a pure white patch on his bald head where feathers once lived; we could see no eyes through the clotted blood that covered his head, except for the white patch; he was alive.

What a mess. We picked him up and took him inside to the sink. There, we covered his head with a warm wet washcloth to try to loosen the caked blood. That is when we realized that the white patch was his skull. Just bone, no skin, muscle or feathers. And no eyes. We figured that he was a dead rooster standing. Well what to do? Wring his neck? Throw him out into the cold? Put him in a warm box by the stove and treat him? What do you think?

Day after day he just stood or sat in the box. Didn't eat and only took some water when we put his beak into a shallow bowl full. After a few days we saw a horizontal slit begin to open on one side of his head, and a bright eye peeped out. After a few more days, the eye was open and blinking. The other side of his head had a dent where the eye used to be. He gradually healed, started to eat and finally we turned him loose. He avoided Dooster after that. But the gruesome sight of his head as found and as it healed earned him the name "Gruster".

He managed to marshall his hens for a year or so after that, and managed to "rooster" a few batches of biddies.

Life is not easy for a one-eyed rooster. One day when he was visiting the radio station that was our neighbor, he got run over very slowly by a car backing out of a parking space. He was "blind sided" in the most classical sense.

Dooster went on for awhile until he and his entire harem got killed one night by a pack of dogs. No more chickens after that.