Feliz Gallo, Feliz Pollo

genein:
>> >i am at the moment enticing her to eat the eggs of free roaming
>> >hens (there is a picture on the carton...they seem happy)..

janL:
>> really, though, does anybody have any experience with how free-range
>> hens are treated?  and genein, where did you procure said eggs?  i
 
genein:
>my wife buys them at a small farm nearby but are also sold in some 
>supermarkets...look for the egg carton with the smiling chicken, holding 
>up for view a carton, with a smiling chicken (you know the rest).

*

     The fury-red blood stung as it splattered across Ramon's left 
eye.  It felt good, as the blood of his enemy always did.  The 
crowd -- foolish crowd -- who gathered around the fight had thought 
the young braggart would lose when the blade came loose.  HA!  
What know they, he cackled, about the fight?  The trinkets do not
matter.  It is the heart and the mind and the eye that grasp victory
from the sky!  Ramon now stood ready for one final assault, to 
tear the living, beating heart from the chest of his foe.  Every
muscle quivered in anticipation.  He lunged and found himself
flying through the air, upside down, held by his ankles.  Unfortunately
for Ramon, the mind that grasps victory was the size of a pea.
A valuable pea.  Vasco, Ramon's owner, won $800 on that last fight.
Together with the smaller winnings from his other roosters,
Vasco had won enough money to pay the rent and put some away in
the box under the bedroom floorboards.
     Carefully, Vasco slipped a leather hood over Ramon's still-shaking
head.  He untied the remaining razor blade from Ramon's ankle,
cleaned the blood from its edge, and returned it to a compartment
of the fishing tackle box he used to carry fight equipment.  Ramon 
squawked as Vasco tucked him into one of five wood-framed, wire-mesh
cages in the bed of his small yellow pick-up truck.  Vasco was 
proud.  His roosters were unbeatable.
     It was a long drive home from the dusty arena in a remote canyon
in the Tehachapi Mountains.  The sun melted into the western horizon 
of weary cottages and trash-strewn streets as Vasco unloaded the cages 
from his truck.  He returned them to the concrete bunker he had built 
in the front yard to keep his roosters safe.  Each food bowl filled
with a mix of grain and mealworms, Ramon and the others were ready
for the night.  So was Vasco.  For the last hour he had thought of
nothing but the rhythmic sway of Teresa's body as she kneaded dough
to make tortillas.  It was Sunday.  She always made something 
special for dinner on Sunday.
     Vasco climbed the crumbling steps to the front door of the bright
yellow stucco cottage.  Teresa chose the color.  She made the weary
old three-room house so cheerful with bright colors, the flowers
she coaxed up out of the hard-pan soil of the yard, and her delicate
paintings of Our Lady.  After winning so much money and thinking of
his Teresa, Vasco felt intoxicated with pleasure.  He opened the door 
and reeled back in sober disgust.  This was not the smell of 
Sunday dinner.
     The roosters cackled in their concrete house.  Ramon knew
what Vasco would discover -- Vasco's uncle was inside.  "Weeelcome
home, leeeetle sobrino."  A squat, fat man sat at the kitchen table.
The chair legs bowed under their burden as El Dupree leaned forward,
using a tortilla to sop up the last bit of juice from his plate.
"Teresa, she cook veery good the steak I breeng jou."  Vasco's
stomach turned.  He could not think of eating anything now.
     "Weak man," thought Ramon, "he cannot bear the stench of his
own blood."  Ramon had always known the human thoughts.  Sometimes
he could even give them thoughts.  Possessing, however, the intellect
of a chicken, on the rare occasions when it occurred to him to use
this ability to his advantage, he had never gotten farther than an
extra ration of mealworms.  Ramon simply could not imagine how to 
improve his life.  True, being yanked, feet first, from the arena 
after winning a fight was less than dignified.  True, he lived in a 
concrete bunker.  But it was also true that the little house was
warm, he had a window facing east, Vasco fed him well, he always
won the fight, and sometimes Teresa sang to him.  What more could 
a rooster desire?
     "Teresa."  Ramon listened to the obese man's thoughts.
"Tanto bella.  Tanto dulceria ella canta."
     "Si," thought Ramon, "a beautiful wife is what a hero needs."
     Inside the little stucco house, El Dupree belched and
smiled.
     "I saw a place muy loco today." Vasco told his wife and uncle.
His chair creaked back precariously on two splintery legs.  He had
positioned himself as far away from the man who smelled worse than
the dump at the edge of their shanty town.  Vasco had never trusted
this 'uncle' of dubious character and lineage.  He could not 
comprehend why Teresa liked this foul vagabond.  Ah, but she had a
warm heart, open to everyone.  "I saw a place muy loco today.  Una
'Hacienda Felizidad' por los pollos."
     Teresa turned away from the dishes, her thin fingers like
birds in clouds of soap suds.  "Que?  A happy place?"
     "Si." Vasco continued.  "I saw it on the way to the fights
today.  I ask mi primo Diego about it.  He say it is owned by
gringos, mucho peligro.  He say the chickens and roosters live
outside, they make nests.  Hacienda Felizidad!"  Vasco snorted,
"Loco!"
     Teresa smiled to herself.  Wouldn't it be nice for the 
roosters to live in a place like that.
     "They are trouble," Vasco continued.  "Diego say those 
gringos ask abou' the fights.  He think they wan' to stop them.
Pare las luchas!  It is our right!  Those gringos, they know 
nothing abou' gallos.  Nada!"  Vasco banged his fist on the 
table top, bringing his chair crashing to the floor and sending
unused utensils jumping across the wooden table.  "Twice they
take my roosters and my money.  Mi dinero!  They wan' to put me
to jail or back to Mexico.  Por que?  Por nada!"
     "Felizidad." thought Teresa.
     The cheshire grin on El Dupree's face widened. 
     "Vaaasssco,"  El Dupree's fat lips wrapped themselves around
his nephew's name as if it was a well-worn cigar.  "Jou need a dreenk."
Five sausage-like fingers pulled an unlabeled bottle from the folds
of a greasy serape.  The bottle's contents were obscured by the
patina of many years' travel with the wanderer.  "Tequila." he said
with reverence.
     Vasco knew this tequila by legend only.  The disgusting 
uncle had never offered it to him before but others had told Vasco
of the liquid's powers.  It could bring a person whatever they 
desired -- healing, happiness, wealth -- the well had no bottom.
One story even told of two poor hermanos who sipped the spirits
in El Dupree's bottle and wandered drunkenly into the desert of
Sonora.  Everyone thought they were dead.  But the brothers returned 
a decade later, rich with gold. They built a great fortress home 
with fresh water springs and grew trees and gardens where none had
grown before.
      Teresa brought two short glasses for the men.  Shot after
shot they drank, so much that Vasco saw two, then three bottles 
dance on the table before him.  At times he grew melancholy, 
remembering childhood in the dirt yard of his father's house in
Jalisco.  At times he grew angry, cursing the gringos and their
laws that made him poor.
     Teresa sat quietly, mending socks, in a corner of the 
kitchen.  Vasco's behavior did not surprise her, it was a hard 
life for people like them.  Nor was she surprised that the drink 
had no effect on Dupree.  He smiled at her when she looked up 
from her work.  Teresa thought she could see all the stars of 
heaven sparkling in his eyes.  He raised his glass, greasy with 
fingerprints, and offered it to Teresa.  Timidly, she stood up.
Vasco slid from his chair to the floor, stopping when his head 
made a quiet thud against a table leg.  Teresa took the glass
from the grinning man's outstretched hand and sipped.  The
liquid she had expected to burn her throat instead tasted sweet,
like a field of yellow flowers, warm in the springtime sun.
     Vasco began to snore.  So deep in slumber, he did not hear
the quiet footsteps in his yard.  Teresa heard them and peered
out the window over the kitchen sink.  Three thin silhouettes
stood by the rooster house.  One, whose long grey hair shone 
silver in the moonlight, cut the lock on the concrete building's
door.  The roosters made no sound. 
     Teresa opened the front door slowly, trying to damp its
usual creaky greeting.  She saw Ramon strut through the open
door of his pen as she walked silently toward the intruders.
He puffed his red feathers, nodded his head to the three
gringos, and turned to face Teresa.  "Venillamos con nosotros,"
he thought.
     Teresa was nervous.  She wanted Vasco to be happy.  He 
was a good man, as honest and true as he knew how to be.  But
she wanted to be happy too.  Teresa turned toward their little
yellow house.  A dim light shone in the kitchen window.  She
could almost hear Vasco's fitful dreaming under the wooden 
table.  She turned to look at Ramon.  He was choosing to end
his fights.  He was choosing to live on the ranch with the 
gringos.  She scratched the dirt with her clawed toes, shook
the dust from her feathers, and walked over to join Ramon.
     The Madonna over the kitchen sink was enlightened.