When the dog barks and the rooster crows it's time to take action

My friend Ms Fivestar is having a terrible time with her neighbours' barking dog. 

When the neighbours leave the house their senile pooch starts YAP-YAP-YAPPING. And it doesn't stop until they return.

Understandably, this is driving Ms Fivestar round the bend. She's exhausted. This isn't good because here is a woman naturally on edge who has now reached (how do you say it?) "tipping point".  

I dropped by her place a couple of weekends ago to find her in a murderous mood. She'd spent the afternoon gathering incriminating evidence against her canine nemesis by recording his incessent barking, which she planned to broadcast over the back fence for her neighbours' displeasure. No one messes with Ms Fivestar.

This must have gone down a treat. On Monday I received this text message: "I'll have to miss Pilates this week as I'll be in local justice mediation with neighbours re: their dog on Thursday. Can you believe it?"

 

I'm afraid I can, Ms Fivestar. This is the way of the world. In the old days the dog would mysteriously disappear... (sorry, getting carried away here. I love dogs!).

Coincidentally, we've had a similar unbearable-noise experience in our street. On the weekend Spanner and I were in the backyard when we first heard it.  

COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO. 

But a rooster's crow doesn't really sound like that, it's more like someone being throttled - over and over.

At the time, Spanner said: "That's nice. Someone's got a rooster." 

Two days later he's on the warpath, having been woken up by the cock's strangulated cries every morning before dawn.

Spanner's not the sort of bloke to cry 'fowl' (I had to include one bad pun) without good reason. He's buggered! This thing never shuts up. This arvo he went on a fact-finding mission to locate the offending creature. He arrived home victorious - it's two houses up cooped up (ha!) in a chicken run down the side driveway. 

I Googled our local council for the rules on keeping roosters and found a paragraph in a document titled Offensive Noise Management Policy. Here it is: "In particular, Council may order a person who is keeping animals or birds inappropriately to keep them in a specified manner or to cease keeping them. For example, Council may order the owner of a rooster that is causing a nuisance by crowing to cease keeping the rooster."

Don't you just love council speak. In other words, if the bloody bird is driving the neighbours nuts they can complain to the council which can order the rooster's owners to get rid of it.

"I demand that you cease keeping this rooster!"

 

I have a feeling the rooster two doors up might just mysteriously disappear...