OK, ya teased. Louise incident?
Is it fit for public consumption?
Well, back in 2014, in the spring, a then young Lester was lonely, as evidenced by his CLOSE friendship with a hen named Louise. He and Louise had been hatch mates. Louise is a chicken. We let a broody hen, SKY, sit on the eggs and hatch and raise the chicks, including Lester. The young tom turkey was feeling his oats one fine warm spring day and decided that Louise was looking particularly fine that day and that he should show her that he had noticed. He strolled up to her in the pasture, in reality it took like 10 minutes for him to cover the 25 feet or so, and puffed up all of his feathers and spread the fan of his tail feathers wide and angled it towards her so she would know that he meant her, and not Julius the rooster. He drummed and hissed letting his snood get all red and dangly, sure signs of turkey ardor. While he was doing all of this Louise was pecking at the ground for bugs and flies and had not really noticed all of Lester's machinations nearby. Julius however had noticed immediately that this weird looking chicken was making eyes at one of his girls. He was decidedly NOT all right with this development. Meanwhile, Louise had finally noticed him and so had several other girls. They all fluttered over there around him and pecked and gossiped thinking Lester had miraculously found something edible and was trying with all of his might to make them aware of it, as roosters do. Now Julius had hopped over to a dead snag lying on the ground and secured his perch at a high enough vantage point to examine this insane, weird chickens movements to try to figure what all he getting up to over there. As usually happens when you get a bunch of gossipy hens all together in one spot, and there's any kind of male nearby, there will be pecking order rituals that need to be strictly adhered to. Well, there was a scuffle that broke out between Anna Bell and Rose about who was supposed to be standing closest to this hunk of male dynamite, and who would get first peck at what ever juicy morsel of bug he had come upon accidently.
Now Julius, being a tolerant rooster, would put up with any manner of shenanigans as a rule, hens being as ditzy as they were, but this scene was beginning to have the mark of an all out " scratch out that bitch's eyes" type of altercation, and he could not let that go on in HIS pasture with HIS girls. " I have been way to lenient with these girls " he thought, "it's time to break up whatever this mess is and put 'ole Mr. Wierdo back in his right mind". He leaped bravely into the air with an irritated squawk and landed right in the middle of the developing dust up, much to the girls dismay. Lester how ever was not impressed. He knew that he outweighed that stuffed shirt of a rooster and had a bigger beak as well. Why his impressive wingspan was every bit of 4 feet wide, and he could actually FLY for gods sake!
While Julius was herding his girls away, pecking rudely at several of the main parties to the disagreement, Lester was backing off a foot or two and adding an extra puff to his big chest display, just for good measure, not that he thought it would be needed. Julius, having finally dispatched the females from the area, turned about and immediately ruffled out his neck feathers to show his displeasure with this upstart dingbat. Lester gobble-gobbled as loud as he ever had, stretching out his long bumpy neck and swinging his engorged snood around like a battle flag at Gettysburg.
Julius was flabbergasted that this was happening, didn't this idiot know who HE was? How dare he squawk about and shake his naked bumpy neck at him like he was a chick and not a rooster in the prime of his tenure at the farm.
Julius had enough and decided that a classic rooster leap with talons and spurs was in order, followed by a good hard pecking around the head and shoulders. He got about 2/3rds of the way to his target and bounced back, *** over teakettle. Before he could get himself righted there seemed to be an enormous stinky feathered weight upon him and someone was pecking the **** out of his behind. Well the tussle that ensued is one about which songs will be sung, ballads will be penned and stories of the encounter would be handed down from hen to chick for generations to come. The dust, the feathers and blood flew in every direction. The NOISE those two made left one to think an bag of chickens had had a snake tossed in with them. The WAY they carried on, it was epic.
When the dust settled there was one victor, bloodied and rumpled, weak but proud to have won the battle. Lester stalked slowly, and as majestically as possible, under the dire circumstances, back to his coop, to lick his wounds and listen to the hens whisper in the coop next door about the fight.
Poor Julius lay in an unruly heap on the field of battle, bloodied, and unfortunately, thoroughly dead.
It was a quiet night in the barn, so quiet you could hear the mice upstairs doing the horizontal mambo under the hay.
The very next day, Lester waited until he was sure that every hen had gone outdoors before strutting out while in full display of his tattered plumage. He gobbled repeatedly and hissed something terrible and why, he even banged his wings against the ground in a VERY suggestive manner, every hen well aware of exactly just what he was suggesting too.
Needless to say we had to procure another rooster, and he was also named Julius, as was the one after him which is the current Julius. Lester did not take any guff off of any stupid roosters, ever. After all, he had spurs too, and his were longer.
The end.
