Talk Cock

Well, I ran out of idea to put in my blog and I asked Ms. Caffeinhigh for ideas. She was happy with my research on banana leaf and its affect on insomniacs (see my thesis: The Predicament of Post Banana Leaf Lunch Predicament. Unfortunately the research has to be halted as the authorities issued budget cuts. Damn the authorities!

I offered her to offer me…wait, let me get that right. I asked her to give me a subject to research on with my limited budget (RM 17.60) and she asked me something rather personal to MANkind. But then, things might get personal. And when things get personal, it means sequel. And you know sequel, bigger budget, higher expectation, etc.

I declined on a research on that subject, and she asked this:
Why does cock crow in the morning?

That’s right. Cock. Crowing in the morning.

I take it that she meant rooster.

With my miniscule budget, I went straight to….Straight Dope (www.straightdope.com), and here are the excerpts:

David Feldman, in WHEN DO FISH SLEEP, says that ornithologists believe crowing marks out territory -- kind of like male dogs peeing, only noisier and easier to clean up after. Kind of saying, "This is my coop, get the heck out of my way, don't mess with my women."

I immediately took to the task of interviewing (hey, Uncle Grouchy is also a journalist, remember) to interview a prominent rooster (or cock) in a prominent coop, Colonel Sand Dust. I offered him Feldman’s explanation.

“Chicken shit!” the colonel almost spat at me. “All these intellectuals, with their chicken feed knowledge. I’d rather be henpecked than agree to his explanation.”

So, I asked him the exact reason for cocks, err…roosters, to crow in the morning. “We crow in the morning,” said Colonel Sand Dust, “coz we don’t crow in the evening, moo-haha-haha!” Later an ambulance from a local asylum passed by. God knows why.

Another explanation was given by the site, it says the following:

There presumably could be some other phenomenon that occurs regularly to trigger the crow. For instance, if a bus goes by at that time, and your rooster interprets the noise as that of an intrusion by another rooster. Or it could just be that your rooster's sleep cycle wakes him up at that time.

That actually explains why a rooster became Chicken Rendang the following day during my estate (plantation) days.

But to mistake a bus for another rooster, maaaan, the rooster must be stupid. We all know that roosters don’t have four tyres.

One last explanation was given as thus:

Feldman quotes Janet Hinshaw of the Wilson Ornithological Society: "Most of the crowing takes place in [early] morning, as does most singing, because that is when the birds are most active, and most of the territorial advertising takes place then. Many of the other vocalizations heard throughout the day are for other types of communication, including flocking calls, which serve to keep members of a flock together and in touch if they are out of sight from one another.

To be in touch, it would help if the roosters have cell phones. Like human, instead of saying hello, the usual greeting can be, “Where are you?”

The tradition of recognising roosters as some religious creature still exists. I found this explanation in the net:

Various religions throughout history have assigned special significance to the cock's crowing; it was said to have been the first animal to proclaim the birth of Christ. Both some Christians and the Norsemen held a belief that the end of the world would be heralded by the crowing of a mighty rooster.

Not only them, but Lord Murugan (A Card carrying Hindu Lord) has a rooster has one of his favourite creatures. He rides peacock for a quick transit, but I am not sure why he need a rooster.

Roosters have also been used as a sacrificial lamb in some cults. Shouldn’t it be sacrificial rooster then?

IT should also be noted that a noted obscenity ‘Cocks*cker’ comes from the word cocksacker – the bugger who sacked too many cocks, despite Rooster/Cock union protest.

Okay, I made that up. Just cock and bull story.