Tucker came over yesterday in late morning to talk to Nyel about “a chicken problem.”  Next thing I knew, it was lunchtime and Nyel was nowhere to be found.  I thought he might be trying to solve whatever the difficulty was, so I walked over that way and sure enough – there were Tucker and Carol on one side of the street and Nyel and a small Bantam rooster on the other.

Only the rooster was moving.  The others were still as statues – Carol and Tucker watching and Nyel waiting patiently for the rooster to follow the trail of scratch into the cardboard box.  The rooster would circle the area and come oh-so-close… but he was definitely smarter than the average banty.  It had been close to an hour.  “Nyel is the most patient person I’ve ever seen,” Carol whispered to me.  I thought they all were.

“Would a net help?” I called over to Nyel.  With his affirmative answer, Tucker headed over to Dave and Lina’s to see if they had one amongst their hunting and fishing gear.  I headed home.  We have an antique net hanging on our kitchen wall.  Gwen Newton gave it to Nyel years ago.  It was her father’s which probably makes it over 100 years old.

Tucker came up empty-handed so Nyel tried Mr. Newton’s net.  Got him in one!  But only for a minute.  That little banty hopped and spread his wings and broke through that ancient netting in a flash.  Then he beat feet toward the schoolhouse and Carol and I headed him off.  Nyel brought the box.  Tucker disappeared and came back from their place with a roll of wire (a tomato cage?)  Quick as a wink he popped it over the rooster and just as quickly that little banty flew straight up (two and a half or three feet?) and out.  Wow!  That was one determined bird.

But Tucker and Nyel were equal to the challenge.  Tucker overtook the bird, plopped the wire on him again and Nyel got him in the box I-don’t-know-how.  It was quicker than the eye could see.  That little feathered fury is now in the isolation run down at our chicken coop and the hens – several of them three times his size – are milling around outside the wire fencing, full of curiosity but wary.  It’s their first experience with a rooster and Farmer Nyel thinks they’d better get acquainted by degrees.

This is my first introduction to a real-for-sure banty rooster, as well.  I now understand why the sobriquet came to mean “someone of small size but aggressive and spirited.”  Oh, and did I say he’s found his crowing mechanism and is as noisy as he is aggressive – day and night?  My suspicion is that he may be headed for the stewpot if he can’t settle down. So…IF ANYONE IS MISSING A BEAUTIFUL BUT FIESTY BANTY ROOSTER, PLEASE LET US KNOW.