Prairie Chicken

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Birds, Courage, Survival / July 8, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I came up through the valley where the homesteaders had tried to make a go of it for a few years, past the tin cans and other evidence of their short stay trying to rust itself back into the ground. Up over the crest of the hill where the Indians had lived for centuries with no more evidence than the weathered rocks of tepee rings

It was spring and I stumbled upon what they may have seen for centuries, the mating ceremony of about twenty-five or thirty grouse. They didn't see or hear me and I stopped about ten yards away and wathched (although my mother might not have thought it proper)

The hens ran around, heads down and tails up in unbashful invitation while the cocks puffed up the air bags in their chests and drummed their challenge

They looked handsome and brave in their posturing and beckoning and their readiness for reckoning and the fights were on, straight on and straight up with spurs and feathers flying

It was vicious but pure
Not a cockfight for the amusement of the bloody-minded, but a way to see that only the strongest would sire the little broods that would have to survive the hawks, and the snakes, and the weather; and all the dangers of a land where it takes a great deal of courage
- just to be a chicken

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