COCKERELS & SEAGULLS

Hello dear reader and welcome to another Sunday at Chez Comb. I hope all is well in your world on this beautiful morning. I am a little off centre this morning and confess to feeling extremely weary due to my sleep being disturbed for several nights on the trot. I ask you dear reader, why ever did God create cockerels? Well I know why he created them. Without Mr Cockerel there would be no little Miss Chickens or Mr Cockerel Junior. Fair enough I grant you, but why did he have to give them such raucous and penetrating voices?

   Most of the time I am a 'live and let live' sort of person, but not I fear when it comes to insomniac cockerels who appear to have dined on Speed. Our neighbours, who are by no means nearby, keep some hens and a cockerel to look after them. He obviously takes his duties very seriously and appears to sleep with one open, as all through the night he can be heard crowing. He is relentless, presumably warning off any predators that stalk nearby in the night.

   Laudable efforts. What a hero I hear you say. Hmmm, heroic as his efforts may be, but at 1, 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning I do not share this view. All I really want to do is stagger out of my bed and leg it round to young Mr Cockerel's pen and silence him. I will leave to your imaginings what I fondly dream of doing to him. But, nobly I rein in my baser instincts and bury my head beneath the pillow in an effort to drown out the noise.

   Mr Cockerel takes a short nap at first light - presumably thinking the predators have pushed off home by then. Blessed peace and quiet ensues and for a short while nothing stirs in our sleepy Yorkshire village. Wearily but thankful I snuggle down under the covers in the hope of a couple of hours uninterrupted shut eye. But there is no rest for the  wicked as my dear Mama used to say. Don't misunderstand me here my dear reader, I am not admitting to being wicked. I am not, as evidenced by the fact that Mr Cockerel is still strutting his stuff down the road there. But there is no rest for me because just as Mr Cockerel shuts up and goes for his nap, the seagulls strike up the band.

   I know, I know, I live near to the sea, so what do i expect to hear? A choir of heavenly angels gently lulling me back to sleep? Well my dear reader, I would love that, truly I would, but I fear my Creator had other ideas during his original seven days of activity. Yes, darn it, he created seagulls. Not solely I'm sure just to disturb my slumber and I am not so egotistical as to think God had his eye on that particular outcome. But it is a fact of life that we share our planet with seagulls. I know we share the planet with gazillions of other creatures too and I should not single out one bird for my attentions, but in the half light of morning, seagulls are my personal bete noir and, I suspect, also of all the small birds tucked snugly up in their nests. Even they are not ready for the 2.30 a.m. clarion call.

   Seagulls are majestic birds and when they venture into our garden they are quite shy and easily spooked, quickly flying off to the safety of the rooftops at the slightest hint of movement from within the house. But at 2.30 a.m. they have no such inhibitions and let rip with fiercely loud and raucous calls ending in a fiendish cacophony of cackling. They are relentless and soon the small birds give in and the dawn chorus begins and with that my dear reader, any possibility of sleep is gone. Bleary-eyed I rise to engage with the day.

   And guess what? As I am going about my daily affairs what do I notice? Yes, you are quite right. An absence of seagulls cackling or cockerel crowing. They are so wiped out after their early morning starts they are all taking a well earned nap, saving their strengths and energies for their all-night soirees.

   On the one hand I can almost look forward to the dark winter mornings when the seagulls may delay their morning reveilles, but on the other hand Mr Cockerel will continue to crow as long as it is dark outside and the predators are still about. The seagulls are beyond my reach but Mr Cockerel is not ... I may be having a word in his shell-like, or maybe something more .........