The Rooster's Crow

There is an old Hmong tale about Kaj Yuam, the heavenly archer, who made his first crossbow and shot down 9 of the 10 suns that originally circled the earth. (My first thought was, if he was a heavenly archer, why shoot down the suns?  Aren't suns part of the heavens? But maybe 10 suns was just too hot and he wanted to make life a little more bearable for Earth's inhabitants.) The 10th sun, fearing for her life, fled into hiding, plunging the world into darkness and chaos; steering it toward the edge of destruction.  Nothing could coax the sun to show herself, until...the rooster crowed.  Upon hearing the rooster's crow, the sun rose from her hiding spot and the first thing touched by her rays was the rooster's head, which now bears a bright red plume as a result. (http://www.grit.com/Animals/Secret-of-the-Roosters-Crow.aspx) Yay for the rooster!  He saved the day!

Roosters were part of my childhood on the farm. There is the iconic picture in my mind of a rooster on top of the gas tank (maybe a bit strange because all the lovely pictures depict roosters on a fence or the roof of a barn - and now I don't know if our roosters really did climb up on the gas tank, or if they just flew up to the fence top, but the rooster in my head is on top of the gas tank) crowing away in the morning.

I left the farm many moons (years) ago and since then had not encountered many roosters crowing away on campus or roaming around the little neighborhood.  That all changed a couple of months ago when the new neighbors invested in chickens.

Which leads me to pose a question to all you loyal readers: Why do roosters crow? Some sources say it is to defend their territory, others that crows are a means of communicating and flocking calls to keep the group together, or to let the hens know where he is.  Chickens are a bird, a diurnal animal, so they "start their day with the sun" sortof. One source said roosters see infrared light, so they sense the sunrise before it happens, others say it is their internal clock that tells them when morning is approaching. I like the definition that said, "the rooster is the bird who awakens the sun at dawn", trying to lure the sun out as in the old Hmong tale. (That makes perfect sense, because the rooster next door definitely does not wait until dawn to crow.)

Sometimes I think Mr. Neighbor Rooster must be young and is still learning how to crow like a real rooster.  His crow seems a bit strained, and only once can I remember him letting out a long crow...it's more like a staccato  'cock-a-doo-(breath)-uh' instead of 'cock-a-doodle-doooooooo'.  I keep thinking he will develop it, but now I am beginning to wonder.  Maybe he never had an example to follow, so he doesn't know what a real rooster is suppose to sound like...maybe he's a rooster with bad lungs and tight vocal chords. Maybe he is an international rooster - Spanish roosters say "kikiriki" instead of the English "cock-a-doodle-do", so Mr. Neighbor Rooster is probably just crowing his own language.