The Rooster Who Worked for the Phone
My rooster learned my phone's ringtone and started crowing at 4:45 sharp, a full hour before the actual sun showed up for work.
I own a rooster named Walter who has crowed at sunrise for six years without complaint. I set my phone alarm for five-thirty every morning, a little chime, and I never needed it, because Walter always beat it. We had a fine arrangement, and we respected each other. Then one summer my daughter changed my ringtone to something she said was more uplifting, a tune with bells in it, and that is when Walter lost his mind.
The first morning, the phone went off and Walter crowed along with it. I thought nothing of it. The second morning, he crowed right when the phone did, a half second early. By the end of the week, he was crowing at the exact minute of the alarm, as though he were the one in charge of it. And then, around the second week, he began to crow before the alarm, at about quarter to five, with the sun nowhere near the horizon, in the dark, like a man trying to get a head start on the competition.
I tried everything. I moved the alarm to six, and Walter moved to five-fifteen. I turned the phone off, and he crowed anyway, out of habit. I even took the phone out to the henhouse and set it on a bucket to show him the time, which he studied for about ten seconds and then pecked. My neighbor across the road, Mr. Ostrander, called to say the whole county was now being woken up by a bird that had no business being awake. I told him it was a free service.
In the end I solved it the only reasonable way. I changed the ringtone back to the old chime, and the next morning Walter slept until the sun was properly up. My daughter was upset, because she liked the bells. I told her the rooster had a union, and the union had voted. If you want to read about other things the animals have done on a farm, the writers at farm.FM jokes have a whole shelf, and I would say Walter is in several of them, though he has never asked for royalties.
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