Hello to all,…My name is Rick (Rickademus),..this is my first little article I have written on Triond,..I just joined earlier this morning, ..My love for animals goes way back from when I was a youngin,growing up in Nashville Tn. on my Granny’s farm, where we had a great multitude of animals, from horses to dogs,cats to chickens,….yes, I even had a pet rooster as a kid,..his name was Topper,he was an ole white rooster,nothing fancy about him,just a chicken,..but he was my little bud.

     Now ole Topper would jump up on the outside of my window seal every morning, and go to crowing,as if to say,in his own little roosterish way,(if there is such a word,lol) get your little narrow butt up,a new day awaits us,..so, I’d jump up,slide into my play duds,and by that time, he’d be waitin for me at the front door,scratching and pecking at the ground,ready for our daily routine of him chasing me around the yard,…he always reminded me of a mini 747 when he would drop his wings down and come at me,…and, I might add,I learned pretty darn quick,by trail and error, not to let him get to close.

    Cause,if he did,he would just love to jump up and dig those spurs  deep into my bony little legs,and more times than not,draw blood.   Now,your probably thinking as you read this,wow,he seems like one mean chicken,but no actually he wasn’t,..it was just his way of playing, cause at any givin time,I could sit right there beside him,reach down,and set him right in my lap,and he would sit right there and go to sleep,…he trusted me, and that was his way of showing his love.

    But, as with most all things, they don’t last for ever,and,I reckon that goes for roosters as well,…for one morning,there was no Topper,he was not at my window,waking me up to come play,..I went to the front door,nor was he there,peaking and scraching at the ground,..I went by his little ambush points where he would hide and spring on me as I walked by, no Topper….so, I went to the barn,where he roosted,and sleep at night,……and that’s where I found him,…or what was left of him,…seems something ,some sort of an animal had slipped up on ole Topper in the middle of the night.

     All that was left,was a pile of feathers,scattered on the ground below where he slept… I remember sitting there on the ground and crying for ever so long,..that was the first time in my young life I lost something I loved so much, as  ole Topper, my little rooster bud.