A rooster on a leash

March 26, 2013 by asurprisecalling 12 Comments

The other morning we woke up to no power at all.  For some reason all of our neighbors had city power overnight but we did not.  We have been able to kinda roll with the punches here and have had much more patience than we would normally have.  We have really been thankful to God for giving us patience because it’s not something that came naturally for us (namely me!) in the states.  However, that morning, we were really having a hard time, and the day just started out rough.

Then the electrician came and worked on our power lines.  He had power up and running, and life moved on.

The rest of the day was really nice.  We were able to spend a relaxing day as a family and had a wonderful church service that night.  What started out as a bad day turned into a good day.

That night, I was Skyping with my friend Corie when someone came to our front door.  It was our friend and her mother.  They had a gift for us in a black plastic bag.  When we asked what was in the bag, they began to open it up.  It was a rooster!  You can imagine our surprise!!!

*Updated pic

Skype call with Corie

Now…the question was “What does one do with a rooster?”

Well…you eat it, of course!  Hmmmm…this poses quite a huge problem for my animal OBSESSED children.  And…wellllll….Mo and I can’t exactly OFF the rooster.

So now we are scurrying around trying to figure out…”Where does one put a rooster until one can figure out what to do with him?”

This whole time, my friend and her mom are still here watching these crazy Americans frantically pace around trying to figure out what to do with this rooster and where to keep him.  We are trying to figure out how to BUILD something to put this rooster in at 9:00 at night.

In all of our brilliance, we came up with the idea to put it in our newly built storage building and stack leftover block to pen him into the corner.  Seriously, I can not do this whole episode justice!  We were so thankful that our friends would be so kind to us but we had NO. IDEA. HOW. TO. STORE. A. ROOSTER!  The obvious flaws in our plan was that:

1) we only had enough block to make our “pen” about 2 blocks high

2) Roosters can fly out of such a small enclosure!!!

We were scratching our heads trying to figure out what to do now when my friend’s mom pulls the rooster completely out of the bag.  She shows us where she had a LEASE ON THE ROOSTER’S LEG!

I swear my neighbors are so darn resourceful!  Who would have thought of putting a lease on the rooster?!

So…we simply tied the rooster to one of the block…

…and our problem was solved!!!

See the lease on the rooster’s leg!

All was well…until the next day when we had to figure out what to do with said rooster.  Mo had to take a neighbor to the doctor in Santo Domingo, so this left me at home alone with the rooster and my daughters.  The girls kept wanting to go out and pet him.  I said “He is not our pet.  He is our dinner.  No one is allowed to pet him or name him!”

*Update…This is Lexie’s rally for the rooster’s life:

We spent much of the day with him in our storage building tied by his leg to a cinder block…because I kept putting off the inevitable!  Finally, Mo came home.  We took Mr. Rooster to a lady in the village that sells us our chicken…not the living clucking kind…but the kind you put into your pot to cook.  (Well, it was living and clucking until she magically transformed it into the kind that you put into your pot.)  We explained that we had this rooster but couldn’t quite complete the act ourselves, and asked if she could help us out.

Needless to say, this was a really hard lesson for our girls…

…and the rooster went to see Jesus that day….Rest in peace, Mr. Rooster!!!