The Chicken Whisperer

I knew it was going to be a fucked up day when I awoke to find all of my chapsticks had melted.  Growing up in freeze your balls off Chicago, has made me a chapstick addict since the age of 10.  Years of bleeding, frost bitten lips, with pieces of flesh hanging off of them had made me a slave to the wax opiate.  Now I am in Khantaralak, Issan Thailand, In the middle of nowhere, and all of my chapsticks are gone.  I have come here only to be with my girl and see her family.  Also to train in Muay Thai, and Lerd Rit, shoot guns, swat mosquitoes, bathe with a bucket of water, shit in a hole in the ground, eat food cooked on a dirt floor, and finally have 3 weeks with no Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, or Lindsey fucking Lohan.

I haven't slept in days.  Intermittent alpha states are all I can achieve in this place.  At midnight the packs of feral dogs begin howling.  At 3 AM, the roosters begin screaming.  All that bullshit about roosters only calling at the break of dawn is a myth.  The roosters here never shut the fuck up unless it rains.  One particular rooster is right outside my window.  I have timed his calls to every 11 seconds -- day in and day out.  He is Gobbles from South Park.  I can see him out the window, pecking at the ground, when he looks up and I can see the surprise on his face "Oh shit!  There's the fucking sun!  Cocka doodle fucking do!"  I time his screams by counting to 11 Mississippi.  I was surprised to find that even Thai/Lao people who don't speak English use the system of counting involving 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, etc. to establish accurate timing.  Must be some American influence from movies or TV. 

I am now plotting the death of the rooster.  Can I just kill it with a Machete?  Whack it with a stick?  I emerge from my mosquito net and step out into the outdoor kitchen for a cigarette.  My girl is already making breakfast, consisting of sticky rice, Kai Giao which is a Thai omelet, and Pad gap pow.  The rooster calls again, and it pierces my cranium.  "Honey, can I please kill the fucking rooster? I can't sleep."  My girl looks at me perplexed.  She simply tunes it out.  The jungle/farm cacophony is like a lullaby to these people.  Much like when I used to live next to the elevated train in Chicago...you just get used to it.
"Why you want to kill chicken?"  she asks.
"Because it's driving me fucking nuts.  I mean, boy chicken making me ting tong mak mak! I swear to God that the boy chicken has some kind of internal clock that makes him scream every eleven seconds."
My girl looks at me "Mai kaojai (I don't understand)"
"You know, like a clock.  The boy chicken has some kind of clock inside of him that makes him scream every eleven seconds.  It's making me crazy.  I'm sick.  I can't sleep.  i want to go back to Bangkok where it's quiet."
After a long pause, I can see the wheels turning in my girlfriends head.  She is trying to comprehend what I am saying, to which she replies "You funny.  Chicken don't own a watch."
I slap my forehead.
"I know the chicken doesn't own a watch."
"But you just say that boy chicken have a clock.  Chickens can't tell time."
"Jesus fucking Christ, can I just kill it please?"
"I don't know whose chicken it is.  Maybe they get mad if you kill somebody's chicken."
"It's not yours or your neighbors?"
"No, boy chicken just like to walk around and boom boom lady chicken.  Then they have baby chicken."
I rub my temples.  Inside, I am really happy that my girlfriend is pretty, because at times like these, I am convinced she is retarded.
Now the rest of my girls family comes outside to eat.  They ask her why I am angry and she explains to them in Lao/Isaan, that I want to kill the boy chicken.
"My mom say boy chicken taste no good.  Why you want to kill it?"

We go back and forth for ten minutes about chickens owning watches, my un-Buddhist desire to extinguish a creatures life simply because it annoys the shit out of me, and in the end, the guy who wires the Western union money every month (Me) wins out.  My girl's mom gives me the nod.  I have permission to kill the rooster.  I grab a huge, cast iron machete, and begin to walk towards the soon to be dead rooster.  There is some Lao/Isaan conversation going on, followed by laughter.  I turn around and ten people are watching me.  Then more kids from neighboring houses show up and soon the crowd has grown to 20.  I am thinking of the George Orwell scene in Burmese Days where he has to go kill the elephant.
"Why is everybody laughing?"  I ask
"Because you bring big knife to kill little boy chicken.  You maybe use big knife like that to kill Tiger."  My girl hands me a long stick that they use to walk the water buffalo with.  "Use this instead."

I trade my Machete for the stick and now there are even more people who have come to see the strange white man execute the boy chicken because it talks too much.  I approach the Rooster.  I don't want to kill it, but my sanity demands it.  I decide to give it one last chance.  I close my eyes and send the rooster a mental projection.  I tell the rooster in my mind, that it is driving me crazy.  That If it limits its calling to dawn only, that I will let it live.  This every 11 seconds thing is a form of psychic torture, and I will kill it if it doesn't shut the fuck up.
I open my eyes and raise my stick.  I am going to kill it the next time it cock a doodle doo's.  I wait,  and wait, and wait some more.  It doesn't make a sound.  I turn around to the crowd of onlookers, and shrug my shoulders.
"Go ahead and kill it."  my girl says.
"No, I'm good.  I think it stopped.  I talked to the chicken with my mind and told it to be quiet or I would kill it.  I think it understands now."

My girlfriend translates this into Lao/Isaan for the crowd of people.  They nod as if this was a good outcome. No chickens had to die today.   One man asks my girl something to ask me.
"This man want to know if you can talk to his wife.  He says she never shuts up either."

To this, the crowd roared with laughter.  I went back inside, crawled under my mosquito net, and finally fell asleep.