Some bugger has got themselves a rooster. I’m not sure who it is but one of our good neighbours is definitely in possession of a noisy cockerel, which, in the sort of inter-species irony we enjoy here at Lush Places, is really getting my goat.
It’s not that the thing is waking me up. Far from it. I am an early riser, which I suppose makes me a bit of a rooster myself. I just don’t feel the need to crow on and on about it like he-who-lives-next-door.
With this fellow, it’s cock-a-doodle-doo at 6.01am and cock-a-doodle-doo at 6.08, then cock-a-doodle-doo again at 6.20, before randomly cock-a-doodle-dooing throughout the rest of the day.
It’s like the thing is a clock radio that somebody repeatedly hits the snooze button on. I’d quite like to hit the thing, too, but with a spade.
My ex-barber Jordy, good for an amusing yarn as well as a decent haircut, once told me a story about his troubles with a rooster that lived next door to him and his young family.
For some time, the damn thing would wake him up early each morning with its raucous crowing and eventually Jordy decided enough was enough; this rooster and its owner needed be given a cock-a-doodle-don’t.
One morning, after being woken again, Jordy marched next door and explained to his neighbour that either “you get rid of that rooster today, or I’ll get rid of it tonight”. There was no more early-morning cock-a-doodle-dooing after that.
Such fowl business doesn’t always end so well, however. Some years back, an old bloke on the West Coast had endless trouble with his neighbour’s bird, which drove him batty with its crowing from as early as 3.20am.
The bloke complained to the Buller District Council but it could do nothing. Although it had a bylaw prohibiting the keeping of noisy animals which caused a disturbance, the bylaw didn’t give the council’s animal control officers the power to do much about it, like fining the owner or belting the rooster on the head.
In the end, he decided the best way to escape the bird was to sell up, telling a local paper, “I have put up with it for a long time and I have had a gutsful … I’m a tolerant person, but enough is enough.”
By a terrible irony, that bullying rooster’s name was Hector.
I have no idea what the new cockerel in our neighbourhood is called. But I can think of a few choice names, starting with The One Who Never Shuts Up.
As I write, I have just come in from the woodshed and guess what? I have heard The One Who Never Shuts Up carrying on again in the distance. What could he possibly have to crow about at 12.30 in the afternoon? A great lunch? The latest All Blacks selections? The Biden-Trump rematch?
It’s not its volume – the distance means his bellowing is not loud at our place – that is so irksome. It’s the sound itself. It has the same effect on me as fingernails on a blackboard, an angle grinder on metal or the sound of Christopher Luxon talking. All are really very annoying, in a getting-my-goat kind of way.
There is, I have discovered, a name for this: misophonia. It is a recently recognised disorder whereby specific sounds – often made with the mouth and in many cases repetitively – cause a variety of chronic reactions such as anxiety, anger, panic or disgust.
Actor Richard E Grant, the fellow who gave us the unforgettable Withnail in Withnail and I, is one sufferer. He can’t stand the sound of people eating apples anywhere near him. Who can blame him? It’s a repellent noise.
Unfortunately, there’s no dependable cure for the problem, though the Misophonia Association in the US suggests counselling, meditation and cognitive behavioural therapy as possible solutions.
I have a better idea for dealing with The One Who Never Shuts Up: sending out our evil, mithering chooks next door to give him a good pecking.
