Thursday, April 06, 2006

The Randleman Rooster

Meet Rudy the Rooster. Rudy was surely someone's farm rooster or maybe game rooster but somehow last summer Rudy, a name given by a lady in the neighborhood, ended up on Weaver Drive in Randleman and adopted the woods and trees of the small town side street as his new home.

Rooster (3)

But, as cute as Rudy is, some of the neighbors on Weaver Drive didn't think living in the city should mean waking up at any random hour to Cock-a-doodle-doo at the pleasure of Rudy's internal alarm clock.

It got so bad at one point that Rudy was on a branch just outside of a bedroom window doing his thing at 3 AM.

Rooster (4)

The woman already knew that in the city limits it's illegal to kill the bird, so any attempt to remove the bird had to be done without harm to it. But an old law on the books does make one exception. A judge can order the Sheriff of the county to kill any bird that is a nuisance. And that's exaclty what happened. A Randolph County judge signed the execution order and gave it to the sheriff.

After numerous calls to the Randleman Police Department and even more numerous failed attempts to capture the rowdy rooster, one neighbor decided six months was enough so she went to the county courthouse looking for a better solution to end Rudy's all night crowing.

Rooster (2)

Sheriff Litchard Hurley was raised on a farm though and he knew there had to be a way not to have to kill this bird. He personally took on this task. He tried to capture the bird with many of the same failed methods that the Randleman Animal Police had pursued. Finally Sheriff Hurley had an idea...an ingenious idea that could have solved this problem in one day.

Hurley brought an old dog kennel to the yard where the rooster was most active. He put a tarp over it to keep the bird in. He scattered corn on the ground near the entrance. He used a string to remotely close the gate of the kennel. And he used the power of Sex to lure the Rooster into the kennel.

Rooster (1)

In a dog carrying crate placed in the kennel he put two of his own hens. In less than an hour after putting the plan into place....Rudy went in to check out the females....the lady at the house pulled the string and Rudy was locked in and was caught.

Now Rudy is on his way to a new home somewhere way out in the country where he can crow to his heart's content.

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