There are a lot of wild chickens on Kauai, of different colours, shapes, and sizes. There are two main reasons for this. One was the hurricanes, especially Iniki in 1992, that blew away the flimsy chicken coops and pens, releasing and scattering their inhabitants. The second is the absence of mongooses, weasel-like predators imported from Asia to do away with the rat problems on all the Hawaiian Islands. It didn’t work: rats are nocturnal, while mongooses hunt in the daytime—rarely did their paths cross. Instead, the mongooses feast on the eggs and chicks of all ground-nesting birds, including many endangered species, as well as the eggs and chicks of the wild chickens. But when the crate of imported mongooses arrived at Kauai, the deck-hand put his fingers into the crate to pick one up and was immediately bitten. Incensed, he threw the mongoose crate overboard. That simple act saved Kauai from the mongoose which, with no predators of its own, soon over-ran and populated all of the other islands. What a blessing the angry deck-hand was to Kauai!
I like the wild, resourceful, crafty, brave and smart wild chickens. They remind me of the brave, resourceful and smart first Hawaiians who journeyed here from so far away, so long ago.
The next morning after we arrived on Kauai, I took note of the chicken flock gathering in beautiful little Prince Kuhio Park from our lanai overlooking the park. We lived for part of the winter in the centre of the Prince Kuhio Condos, an older, completely renovated former hotel, built in the 1960s. I counted seven adults—five roosters and two hens, one with two teen-age daughters, soon to be on their own. There were no little chicks for the second year, likely because of the feral cats we had seen around the complex last year.
One of the roosters, a typically coloured golden yellow, red and black Kauaiian rooster, was limping badly, his bum leg scarcely touching the ground as he limped along. We named him Limpy and wondered what sort of accident or mishap had injured his leg, and if it would get better soon.
In the trunk of the condo-owner’s car that we were using, I found some mouldy chicken feed in a rusted can, left over from last year. (I keep chicken feed in the car, just in case we run into needy chickens while driving around the island.) I put out about one-half the first evening, after it got dark, on a gravel mound in the park just below and to the right of our lanai. I put it out at night because, apparently, management doesn’t like people feeding the chickens around the condos. The chickens found the mouldy but obviously still palatable feed in the morning. The second morning they were all below our lanai at 7:12 a.m. daybreak, for the newfound though somewhat mouldy feed supply; the last of the left-overs. You’d never DARE to feed mouldy grain to horses; perhaps a little to cattle, but chickens can handle it.
Limpy was there, too, but he was chased away by the other roosters whenever he seemed to get too close.
That day we drove to Kalaheo to get some chicken scratch from the hard-to-find feed store located in a back lane behind the Brick Oven Pizza. I bought a ten-pound bag for six dollars and put some feed out that night in two spots: the gravel mound and along a rock wall in the park.
In the morning, at dawn, I could watch all the chicken action silently and secretly from behind the patio door leading to the lanai. They certainly liked the new, fresh-from-the-mainland grain. Now I could see a definite pecking order: the boss rooster, a second-in-command, and down the line to the hens. Limpy was at the very bottom and no one cared about the teen-age girls—just yet!
When they were done, in ten minutes or less, the roosters, loudly and often, thanked me, or the Omniscient Overnight Provider of the Manna from Heaven.
I was enjoying the drama, but my wife said the roosters were much too close and far too loud, and I was asking for trouble. There was a high probability, especially during full moon, of someone catching me, reporting my activities and having me (but not her!) cast out ignominiously and forever, from the P.K. Condos!
Perhaps I was too close and too easily spotted on my nightly chicken feed run. So I moved further away, finding a somewhat bare sandy area in the grass to scatter the feed. I put a smaller amount on the gravel mound and a larger amount on the sandy area. The next morning, the chickens were all done at the gravel mound in less than a minute, but one hen found the grain on the sandy spot and within 30 seconds the rest of the flock were all there too. The after-breakfast thank you crowing was somewhat diminished from further away and I could still take in all of the action. Limpy was consistently picked on, but I noticed he could still crow, and did, fairly often.
One day a neighbouring couple from the mainland in a condo close to ours called to my wife and me as we were having our lunch on the lanai. “Have you noticed that there’s one limping rooster? We’ve named him Gimpy.”
They also liked the chickens and were among the very few who knew about my nightly chicken-feeding routine which had started the previous year. Their son, who was an incognito US Air Marshal on overseas flights, was visiting with them for a week. Sitting silently and alone on their lanai in the dark, he noticed and watched me. When I was done, he went back inside and told his parents, “There’s a strange guy sneaking around in the park—I think he’s spreading somebody’s ashes!”
I had to get more chicken feed about ten days later. I asked for a bigger bag but the fellow said the boss wasn’t in and he didn’t know where the next size bigger bag was kept. Another six dollars.
He also told me there were two kinds of people: the chicken lovers and the chicken haters. “So we’ve got chicken feed for the chicken lovers and we’ve got chicken traps for the chicken haters.” He knew where I stood.
The feeding was going well, the sun was rising earlier and the chickens were arriving at 7:04 a.m. One morning, Limpy arrived first, remembering the story of the early bird and the worm, and got a goodly portion before the rest showed up. But it didn’t happen again: it’s hard to sneak out of the tree without waking the rest of the flock.
A few days later, one of the roosters made a determined effort to rid the flock of Limpy, now and forever. He chased Limpy in a circle, Limpy running on one leg, flapping his wings to get more speed. The malicious pursuing bully was close behind, running hard, but no wings needed for speed. Limpy then made a big arc, but the rooster behind him wouldn’t stop. So Limpy tried a big figure eight pattern, a last ditch, never-been-used-before attempt to confuse or tire out bully rooster. It worked; bully gave up and went back to eating with the others.
Limpy was left out, standing alone, on one foot, away from the flock. He got his wind back; he ruffled his feathers, then he crowed, standing on one foot. He looked around, crowed again, and again in quick succession. He looked like he was just going to keep on crowing, so I looked at my watch. Limpy kept on crowing, on and on. My close estimate was that he crowed six times in one minute: that’s one crow every ten seconds.
If there was a Guinness Book of World Records category for the number of consecutive crows in one minute by a one-legged rooster, Limpy would hold the record hands down— well, foot down.
So I spread the feed still further, ending with a long thin line that Limpy could find (which he did) farther away from his fine-feathered foes. He didn’t improve any, limp-wise, over the next six weeks, but his crowing enthusiasm continues every morning and throughout the day. Limpy has a great Pavarotti tenor crow, ending with a fine, long, Hawaiian finish. I can recognize his crow any time of the day.
And I bought more chicken scratch: $14 for a 25 pound bag.
It would do until we went home—$26 worth.
“It’s only chicken feed,” I told my wife.
So what can we learn from this funny little Kauaiian chicken story with the feisty little Kauaiian rooster? An injured, one-legged, but very determined rooster, unable to do at all what roosters enjoy doing, a lot! A handicapped outcast, reviled, despised and rejected by his fellow flock members, living from foot to mouth. He’s barely getting by, unable even to scratch, with only one foot, for bugs and other high protein stuff that wild chickens need.
Could we say “If life gets you down, if the going gets really rough, sing. Lift your head and your heart, and your voice and be happy. Be thankful for life, even though it may be harder than it ought to be. And it may not be fair either.”
Could we say that even on one leg you can still stand and sing. You can shout to the flock or to the world, “You just ain’t gonna get me down!”