The Death of Mardi Gras

The Death of Mardi Gras

My brother, Josiah Caleb Miller, was birthed on August 3, 1997: the same day our nocturnal rooster, Mardi Gras, suffocated in my father’s beat-up Dodge Ram.

Someone Father had built a barn for gave him a beautiful white rooster with a cascading tail in purple, green, and gold. We thought his festive colors were the reason his previous owners called him Mardi Gras. But, after the first night, we realized our conjecture was wrong. Simply put, he was a party animal–or party bird. While the rest of the chickens tucked themselves into their chicken condominiums and slept the night away, he’d prance around the yard, clucking and preening his feathers, or hop on top of the rocking chairs on the front porch.

The first night it happened, Father thought someone had come to rob us and were too enthralled by our Amish, hand-caned rocking chairs to focus on their previous task. When he opened the front door and gruffly called, “Who’s there?” the only reply he got was the continued rocking, a flutter of wings, and a cockle-doodle-do. For there was Mardi Gras, literally rocking back and forth, digging his talons into the wood for support while periodically throwing out his wings as if to catch a breeze. In the morning, it was obvious Mardi Gras liked his newly found perch, for piled beneath the rocking chair — and splattered over the seat — were the marbled droppings of a rooster’s six hour rest.

As if voicing his discontent for the country night life, Mardi Gras soon went from crowing every three or four hours to every couple of minutes. The complications Mother experienced while carrying Caleb had taken its toll on her patience and peace. The last thing she needed was a rooster’s crow jostling her awake when her rippling belly had calmed enough to let her sleep. “Do something, Merle,” Mother said between clenched teeth. “Anything.”

Our Father had sobbed like a child after shooting a puppy whose mange was beginning to infect our dogs. “He just looked at me, Bev, with these big brown eyes,” he had wailed, clenching Mother against his chest. “It was as if he knew what I was going to do and said it was all right.”

From Father’s brief employment of euthanasia, we knew we weren’t getting a 12 piece chicken dinner out of this deal. Instead, Father took a burlap sack and tied it over the rooster’s head: just loose enough so he could breathe, but tight enough so that he couldn’t see any light and begin crowing. On our way to school, my older brother Josh and I would go outside and see Mardi Gras wobbling across the yard with the burlap bag over his head like a drunkard kept by kidnappers.

Even though Mardi Gras no longer crowed at night, during the day he began acting lethargic to the point he only jumped two hens in a 24 hour period. Father attributed it to lack of oxygen from the burlap sack, and at night began stowing him in his Dodge Ram where if he did crow, we could no longer hear him. The only problem was the transition from chicken coop to construction truck. It was hard for Father to look professional at his job sites with bird poop coating his staple gun and levels, and I was always embarrassed when Father dropped me off at school; for not only was his truck an eyesore in itself, all of homeroom I spent plucking saw-dusted feathers from my hair. But, regardless of his faults, we all loved Mardi Gras too much to give him to someone who’d keep him one night and turn him into rotisserie chicken.

So, in the truck Mardi Gras happily remained until Mother woke us with labor pains in the black of morning on August 2nd. Everything went like clockwork: we stowed Mother’s overnight bag into the conversion van; Josh and I were dropped off at the neighbors” house, and my usual pokey Father sped into Northcrest Hospital as if he were competing in the Indiana 500. A day and a half passed of Mother having excruciating contractions and zero dilation when the doctors declared Caleb to be taken by C-Section. Then, around 5:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 3, 1997, Josiah Caleb Miller was born at seven pounds and three ounces. The doctors worried the pregancy complications might’ve stunted Caleb’s lungs, but he came out flailing his arms and wailing so loudly the doctors said he was going to be a Pentecostal preacher.

Later that evening, Father returned home to shower, shave, and grab something to eat besides what he’d mooched from Mother’s hospital tray. Father was leaning over the sink, eating an egg sandwich, when he looked out the window and saw his bronze Dodge parked in the driveway. With his sandwich lodged between his teeth like a dog’s bone, Father darted outside and wrenched open the passenger door of the truck. At first, he couldn’t find him, and thought he might”ve escaped. But then Mardi Gras’ tail caught the sunlight streaming through the windows and began shimmering like a prism. His limp body was tucked against the floorboard of the truck; his blue beak pressing into the seal of the driver’s side door. If it hadn’t been for the birth of his second son, Father probably would have mourned Mardi Gras until Christmas. Even with Caleb’s addition to our family, whenever we passed a farm where a rooster stood — his neck stretched out as he lifted his face to the sun and cockle-doodle-dooed — Father’s eyes got a little misty, and he had to look away.