Cockadoodle Doo!

I am in love.

With a chicken.

Let me back up a bit and explain the whole situation.

On March 30th there was a fire at a warehouse across the railroad tracks from where I work in Denham Springs. A big fire. And we were evacuated. The plant in the upper right corner of this picture is ours. It took a lot of firemen from the area to put out the fire and we couldn't be more thankful to them. The fire was in a warehouse that houses chemicals. A lot of chemicals. And the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Environmental Quality are still out there cleaning and investigating 13 days later. They have our road closed and we have to stop at a police car that is stationed on our road every day and let the officer know where we are going.

The road at the bottom of the picture, with the line of cars, is the road I travel when I come in to work. But with the road closed I can't come in that way anymore. So I have to take a different route. And I curse that different route daily. Until last Friday.

I was driving down Range Avenue, about to enter Antique Alley, when something caught my eye.

It was a GIGANTIC rooster. And it looked like it was as tall as me! I know you're all thinking that the gigantic is not the word that comes to mind when thinking of my height, but if you think about a rooster being as tall as me... it would be GIGANTIC!

I didn't have much time to check out this wonderful animal as I was passing by, but I knew it was colorful, made out of recyclable materials and it had to be mine! I called Duane as soon as I got to work and made a date with him to go to Antique Alley on Saturday.

And that was exactly what we did. As we pulled up I found out that the place was called Korner Shop Antiques and it was a small warehouse filled with all things old and wonderful.

There were tables and doors and windows. All kinds of things made out of metal and old wood. And it was cramped in there. I don't think you could possible find anywhere else to put things and if it wasn't colorful, easy to spot roosters that I was looking for I probably would have spent the whole day in there and not seen everything that they had. It was like someone put together a giant jigsaw puzzle of this and that, and the missing pieces of the puzzle were your path through the entire maze.

The first thing we looked at was that big, beautiful rooster I saw the day before. He was outside, as obviously some things were spilling out of the cramped inside. And he was even bigger than I remembered. And Duane's eyes bugged out of his head when he saw just how large this animal was. And her $189 price tag.

So we ventured inside and started looking for all the small ones roosting inside. Each one we found was unique and I loved them all. There were small ones, medium ones, large ones, and of course the extra large ones outside.

I loved this medium sized blue one. And he almost came home with me. But Polibut didn't.

It came down to these 3. It was so hard to choose! The one on the right was mostly orange. The one in the middle was shaped differently than the others. He had a longer neck and bigger feet. And the one on the left won my heart.

These 2 looked so cute together. I couldn't possible break them up.

Oh and there were pigs too! And flamingos and mushrooms and we even saw some bunnies.

But it was a rooster that I came for, so it was a rooster that I left with. Meet Henry.

He's going to make a great pal for Lucy when she finally gets her final clear coat and makes her way out to the barn.