Dear Queenie,
I live in Cay Bay and work nights at a casino. This means when most respectable people are getting up in the morning, I am usually trying to go to sleep. Recently, my neighbour decided she wanted fresh eggs. Fine. She got chickens and lets them roam around her yard. Also fine. Then she got a rooster. Queenie, this rooster is defective. I grew up believing roosters crow at sunrise. Apparently nobody explained this to him. He crows at 8:00am. He crows at 10:00am. He crows at noon. He crows at 2:17 in the afternoon because perhaps a leaf moved. Sometimes I swear he waits until I’ve just fallen asleep before announcing: COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOO! And he doesn’t crow once. Oh no. He has follow-up remarks. I have tried earplugs. I have closed my windows. I have turned on the AC. I have even found myself lying in bed negotiating with a chicken. “Please. Just give me four hours.” My neighbour thinks he’s wonderful. She says: “That's nature!” Queenie, nature and I are no longer on speaking terms. I’m exhausted. I haven’t complained seriously yet because I don’t want neighbourhood bacchanal over poultry. But I’m beginning to fantasise about waking my neighbour at 3:00am every time I come home from work and shouting: “GOOD MORNING!” Is there a peaceful solution, or must one of us cross the road? —Cock-a-Doodle-DON’T
Dear Cock-a-Doodle-DON’T,
I regret to inform you that your rooster may not actually be defective. The childhood promise that roosters politely crow once at sunrise and then spend the remainder of the day quietly contemplating farm life was apparently propaganda. Roosters crow for all sorts of reasons. Territory. Other roosters. Activity around them. Changes in their surroundings. And, based on the evidence from Cay Bay, possibly because you finally fell asleep. But your neighbour’s response of: “That's nature!” deserves examination. Mosquitoes are nature too. We still put screens on the windows. Living near other people requires a little more consideration than simply identifying the biological origin of the noise. And you have an additional complication. Your daytime is everyone else’s night-time. Your neighbour may genuinely not realise that her rooster’s lunchtime concert is the equivalent of someone standing outside her bedroom at 2:00am with a trumpet. So before declaring poultry war, talk to her properly. Not while exhausted. Not immediately after the rooster’s seventh encore. Explain your work schedule and ask whether there are reasonable ways she can reduce the noise reaching you, particularly during the hours when you normally sleep. Don’t begin with: “Your rooster has to go.” Begin with: “I need your help because I’m not getting enough sleep.” That makes this a neighbour problem to solve rather than a chicken prosecution. You should also do what you reasonably can on your side: blackout curtains, earplugs that actually fit, white noise or whatever combination helps create a daytime sleeping environment. But there are limits. You should not have to soundproof your home like a recording studio because Captain Cock-a-Doodle has discovered his voice. And please resist your 3:00am GOOD MORNING experiment. Tempting? Absolutely. Effective? Probably. Neighbourly? Not so much. Besides, once humans start crowing at each other across Cay Bay in the middle of the night, the rooster has won. Talk to your neighbour. Protect your sleep. And remember: She wanted fresh eggs. The hens had that covered. Nobody asked for the alarm clock. —Queenie
