Haiti

The following is an excerpt of an email from friends of mine that are in Haiti right now... Laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee... just had to share it!

Does anybody really like roosters? I've never lived on a farm, but it seems strange to me that people would like having the stillness of early morning shattered at the crack of dawn by high-pitched shrilling and crowing. A rooster is like an alarm clock over which you have no control. There is no 'snooze', no 'off'. Imagine, for a minute, that it was a human being doing this. Every morning, without fail, a red-headed, pea-brained, shrieky-voiced guy parks himself under your bedroom window and screams at the top of his lungs. Wouldn't the average person just go and administer a colossal beating on this guy? Why, then, is it ok for an animal to do this?

So D. beat the rooster this morning. D's a pretty peaceable girl, likes animals, and all that, but this bird really had it coming. Since my knowledge of farm life doesn't extend much beyond stereotypes, I'd thought that your typical rooster just crows 2 or three times at sunrise and that's it. The vile creature that lives in our backyard is good for at least 2 hours. First light here is somewhere between 4:30 and 5. So for about two weeks now, from 4:45 to about 7:00, we've been treated to a regimen of what I can only describe as the sound of somebody vomiting and coughing simultaneously, at the pitch of fingernails on a blackboard. Something had to give. We'd tried feeding it, moving it, tying it up, throwing rocks at it, no good. This morning I was lying there with a pillow over my head and willing all the plagues of Egypt on this rooster when I heard the back door slam. A moment later, the bird's next cry was abruptly cut off. Then, the sound of rustling feathers and slapping noises. She had got it by the leg and was holding it upside down, delivering a series of emphatic forehand-backhand combinations. The unstoppable force meets the immovable object. Maybe it's hopeless to try beating instinct out of an animal with such a small brain. Can roosters learn things? Anyhow, our next plan is to tape its beak shut every night and release it at 8:00.

This morning, as it happens, we'd have been up early anyway. We live across from a church. Church starts at 3am. With bells. I thought the tradition of ringing bells to summon people started centuries ago because people didn't have personal timepieces and so had no other way of knowing when services would begin. Why carry on this practice in 2008 when everyone has a watch or cellphone? Why wake up a whole town at 3am because some people like to sit in the dark and sing off-key about Jesus? The singing is bad, but the preacher guy is worse. He doesn't sing, he shouts banalities over the singing, like an auctioneer or a circus ringmaster-"THAT'S RIGHT! JESUS! HE LOVES YOU! DID YOU KNOW IT? CAN YOU FEEL IT? JESUS! JEEEESUS! That anybody could feel spiritually upbuilt by this experience absolutely beggars belief.