The Gallant Knight...

Recently, while the whole family was outdoors - most engaged in work preparing the garden beds and doing fence work, though some of the boys were using the back field as a golf course - the neighbor's young golden retriever got loose and bounded over and wrought havoc upon our chickens and our peaceful afternoon. ​

The dog, essentially a big puppy in the guise of a full grown canine, really only wanted to play, but for the fowl she was a terrible surprise and for the family she created an unexpected streak of chaos. Barking and racing around, she scattered the hens wildly and, pell-mell, they took off in every direction - over the field, to the woodshed and barn, behind the garage, at least one to the top of the coop, into the woods, flapping and squawking and seeking cover, though in the end the dog only had eyes for the rooster, which ultimately we found appropriate. Perhaps his size and color made him an easy target, but he also didn't flee. Instead, placing himself relatively between the perceived predator and his birds, he took the full force of the dog's attack. Several times the dog pounced and pinned him, jaws around his neck - and though he escaped the dog's clutches at least twice he was quickly nabbed again each time, to the yells and screams and loud exclamations of adults and children alike as they scrambled in attempts to stop the dog. It all happened very quickly and ended only when the neighbor raced in and threw himself on the dog in a crazy tackle, and our oldest daughter grabbed up the poor rooster, all of us fearing the worst. The rooster is normally not one to approach or try to pet - he is a shameless backstabber at times in fact if you appear to threaten  his domain - but now he was tame, wide-eyed but still in his exhaustion, breathing hard and cooing like a mourning dove in our daughter's arms while we checked him over for injury. Miraculously, he was relatively unscathed but for the good portion of feathers left behind in the field. We spent the next hour searching the property for the scattered chickens, coaxing them back with calls, flushing them out of hiding, and chasing them down to catch and tote back to the coop. Ginger went missing completely but not forever - we searched deeper into the woods and prayed to St. Anthony and depended on our Holy Mother and hoped she would return before roosting time, and then she just appeared, having emerged from whatever hiding place, waiting in all patience and politeness by the pen gate for someone to let her in (apparently too tired to hop over). 

When all was said and done, we were impressed by the rooster for simply doing his job. We wished he'd given the dog a good scratch, but nevertheless his crow rang out in the setting of the sun that day, all the chickens safely at home to roost around him. It was an experience you don't have every day, and at the risk of making too much of the episode, it was a glad moment of chivalry and a reminder of an older order of things, when the gallant knights of Chaucer's tales, Arthurian legend, or like Gilgamesh or Sir Gawain or St. George himself, inflict with full willingness upon themselves the risk of death for the sake of another, to vanquish a foe or slay the dragon who threatens all that is holy, good, pure, innocent, worthy, free - by the code of the highest ideal. Gallant - the word we use to describe the knight, evoking ideas of bravery, chivalry, heroism, courtesy - comes from the Latin gallus, for rooster. Our little experience was a welcome one in an age when heroes have been made of the most pathetic and self-centered of incapable characters - the warped and sorry, misguided notion of the unlikely hero of ages gone by. Somehow, sometimes, we see an innate sense of something like manly valor imprinted upon - and shown most readily by - the merest of creatures, who are not endowed with a rational soul but nevertheless serve to model, if they fulfill the goodness of their nature, God's ways. God grant us the insight and grace to fulfill our own good nature, and give us brave knights who will stand at all risk, unflinching in the face of possible demise, to protect those in their charge and care who depend upon such courage!