The Red Rooster Rescue Mission

by David Stalling

My friend KC loves animals with a kind of courage that stands out in Montana. She started Trap Free Montana, an anti-trapping group, in a place where trapping is still deeply woven into the culture.

Some people admire her for it. Some people think she’s out of her mind. None of that ever seems to matter to her.

She rescues animals too.

The other day she called and asked if I wanted to help catch a chicken somebody had dumped in the woods.

I was depressed and honestly didn’t want to go anywhere, but KC has the kind of persistence that’s hard to say no to. She kept after me until I finally pulled on my boots and went with her. By the end of the night, I was glad I did.

People abandon domestic chickens out here more often than most folks realize. They get tired of raising them and just turn them loose.

Part of me sometimes wonders whether rescuing them is just denying a fox or coyote an easy meal. But KC says:

“That chicken doesn’t belong out here. It’s like dumping a dog in the woods.”

Standing there listening to her, I know she’s right.

The chicken turns out to be a rooster—a beautiful red rooster with glossy feathers and bright eyes. Smart too. Smarter than us, as it turns out.

At first we can’t even find him.

We stop near a clearing where a young guy is practicing with his bow for hunting season. Nice guy. He says he’s seen the rooster before and points us toward an area where people keep reporting sightings. So we head that way.

The evening smells like pine needles and dust. KC circles wide on one side while I move through the trees on the other. The hillside is steep, dropping hard from the road down toward the river.

After a while I crouch low because I get this strange feeling the rooster is close. Without really thinking about it, I start making soft little clucking noises.

A second later the rooster answers from somewhere in the brush. I laugh out loud.

Suddenly the whole thing feels strangely familiar, almost like turkey hunting. I used to hunt a lot, and here I am again calling a bird through the woods—except this time I’m not trying to kill something. I’m trying to save it.

Finally we spot him bursting through the brush in a flash of red feathers.

And then the chase begins.

KC cuts one direction. I move the other. We try to box him in, but the rooster is fast—darting through deadfall and brush piles, disappearing every time we think we’ve cornered him.

For the next few hours we stumble through the woods trying to outsmart a rooster. I start feeling like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner.

Sometimes we almost have him. Sometimes he completely humiliates us.

At one point he shoots right between us before either of us can react. KC nearly gets him with a blanket toss, but he slips free again.

By then it’s getting dark. The trees turn blue and shadowy in the fading light, and eventually we give up and head back toward the truck scratched up, exhausted, and defeated.

And there he is.

The rooster is standing calmly behind KC’s truck eating the feed she scattered earlier, like he’s been there the whole time waiting for us.

He glances up at us once, completely relaxed, then goes back to eating.

We never catch him that night.

But driving home, I realize something inside me feels lighter. For a few hours I stop thinking about everything weighing me down. I’m out in the Montana woods helping someone do something good, however small it might seem.

And it reminds me there’s a difference between chasing something to destroy it and chasing something to save it.