Tiong Bahru Rooster

If you ever wandered along Yong Siak Street or the the junction of Kim Pong Road and Moh Guan Terrace, this smart looking rooster may have caught your attention.

I am sure many shutter-bugs would not have missed the opportunity to shoot this fine looking fowl.

There is a sad story behind this rooster.

This rooster used to live in the alley between Yong Siak Street and Bo Bo Tan Gardens. He had 3 other companions.

Every morning, he and his buddies would start to crow just after 4am. I think there were some problems with their internal clocks.

As a result, there were many complaints that were lodged against these FOWL gang but people were still generally tolerantly.......until the bird flu epidemic came about.

The authorities were quick to witch hunt all suspects and this brood were not spared.....except for this one who got away during the capture and destroy operations.

If this rooster could talk and feel, he would be telling you how much he misses his buddies right now. Perhaps that is why he is still walking around this area with the hope of reuniting with his friends.

Anyway, after he became "SINGLE", he always ended up at Bo Bo Tan Gardens as he was well fed there. A retired nurse had a cat there and this rooster had the audacity to eat from the same bowl as the killer cat.

Both Cat and Rooster co-existed very well and the nurse ended up caring for the rooster as well.
By the way, that cat at Bo Bo Tan was a top killer. He would kill pigeons and slowly eat every part of them except for the wings. He also kills rats very efficiently.

Why he left the rooster alone remains a mystery to me.

With a new home and a new found mammal for a buddy, life seems to be going well.

But little did this rooster and cat knew that they would be displaced very soon.

Bo Bo Tan was sold en-bloc and all of us had to leave.

As we move out of this place, we salvaged whatever useful things we could bring along and conveniently left the USELESS stuff behind.

So Mr Tiong Bahru Rooster was once again left alone to figure out how his future would look like. I would only say it looked pretty "beak".

Everyday, this rooster has outwit, outsmart and outplay his way so that he does not end up being a road kill........so that he could crow at 4am for one more time.

I really dread the day I see a lifeless chicken carcass in the middle of the road just because someone was driving too fast for this chicken to cross the road.

So why did the chicken cross the road?