There is a bantam rooster living in the rafters of my garage. We call him Roo. We didn't plan on owning a rooster, nor are we suppose to have one where we live. In my town you must have an acre of property to own any farm animals. We are huge animal lovers however, and usually shelter and feed whatever comes to us.

Roosters are pretty fast runners, and that is precisely how we became covert rooster owners. Five years ago my husband and I noticed two men running down the street chasing, you guessed it, a rooster. Not usually what we see around here.

Days later that same bird turned up in my yard, eating the seeds that fell from my bird feeders. He stayed all summer, roosting in trees at night and crowing all the neighbors awake in the morning. It is a miracle no one ever called to complain, as our houses are pretty close together in my neighborhood.

Fall and Winter came and went and the little bantam rooster still stayed around our yard. We put seed out for him, and he survived the freezing cold and snow by perching in trees and staying under bushes.

Two years went by but Roo never left. He stayed around and we fed him daily. In the evenings, he would fly up to our chain link fence, which was only four feet high. From there, he would pace back and forth looking up at a branch ten feet above his head. After a few false starts, he would make a big effort and manage to flap his way up to the branch, out of harms way for the evening. Every time he did this he loudly crowed his accomplishment to us all. Then he settled in to sleep the night away high in the trees.

Four o'clock in the morning finds Roo wide awake and starting his first crows of the day. A misconception about roosters is that they only crow at dawn. This is entirely false. They crow at any time of the day, and they do it often. Roo sounds like a rusty nail when he crows, all creaky and sharp, jagged and loud.

After about two years of living outdoors year round, we tried to get a shelter of some sort for him, in our back yard. He had lost part of the comb on his head to frostbite, and we were always worried he would freeze to death. We went to far as to buy a screened-in gazebo for him, hoping we could corral him in it every night. The first big wind storm took it down however, which was just as well as Roo never could be herded into it.

Some how, eventually, we managed to shoo him into the garage one night, where we really learned how loud a little bird can be. The garage is right beneath the bedroom. No need for an alarm clock anymore! It's been about two years now that Roo has lived inside our garage. We can't touch him, but we do talk to him and he talks back. He is very chatty, clucking and cackling when we approach.

The very bad thing about fowl in your garage, is that you cannot paper train them or set up a litter box for them to use. So guess where he goes? If you guessed everywhere, you are right! Constant sweeping and brushing off my car is necessary, as he seems to love to "make a deposit" on the hood.

We have a routine with Roo, letting him out around 11 a.m. every day. Because of morning crowing and the fact that police officers live across the street from us, we make sure we don't inconvenience anyone with our pet. Most of the neighbors seem aware of Roo, sometimes commenting on him. We tried to keep him in the fenced- in garden area of our yard but that didn't always work. There have been times in the past years when I was the crazy lady chasing a rooster back from across the road. He never did tell me why chickens cross the street.

Something we learned about roosters that we didn't know before was that they molt every year. It seems to start in late spring and goes through the summer. First the large feathers fall off, and populate my garage floor. Then comes the rest, tiny little feathers by the hundreds. I sweep them, along with rooster poo, out into the driveway to blow away. By mid Summer Roo has few feathers and looks pretty shopworn.

Roo spends much of the day wandering around my fenced in garden, pecking at bugs on the ground. When he is done with that, he digs himself a hole in the dirt, usually in a sunny spot, and lays down in it to take a dirt nap. Birds often like to burrow in the dirt as a way of cleaning their feathers. Don't ask me, I don't know how this works.

Come late afternoon, my husband and I have to herd Roo back into the garage so he can go up on his roost for the night. This involves me pushing my way through a large hosta, tall artemisia, and exiting into a lilac bush. That's where Roo stays during the day. From there, using a long thin branch, I have to drive Roo towards the garage. The dog stands guard at the top of the garden so that Roo doesn't run back that way. My husband stands in the driveway after I do my part, and rushes Roo inside. Down comes the garage door, and rooster duty is over for the day.

Roo is a fun little bird, and while we enjoy having him, is it an adjustment. We love him though, and will keep him until he passes from this world and goes to that big chicken ranch in the sky. Until then, I will sweep up poo, and collect some pretty colored feathers from my bird.

Mature male chickens are called roosters, or cocks, while an immature male chicken is called a cockerel.

There are approximately 150 varieties of domestic chickens. They became domesticated about 8000 years ago. (How they know that I cannot guess. Hieroglyphics?)

A chicken's heart beats a super speedy 280- 315 times a minute. WOW!

Their body temperature is higher than ours, at about 102- 103 degrees. (Hotter if they are in a casserole) Just kidding.

Despite that fast heart rate, roosters do not breathe as quickly, taking only 18- 20 breaths a minute.

Chickens cannot sustain flight for long. Thirteen seconds was the longest flight on record.

They do, however, run at a fairly speedy nine miles per hour.

A chicken has more neck bones than a giraffe. They haven't any teeth, so their food is swallowed whole. A part of their stomach is used to grind up the food.

A chicken will cluck when happy and can be very vocal.

There are more chickens in the world than there are people.

All of today's domestic chickens can be traced back genetically to Gallus Gallus, the red jungle fowl.

And perhaps the strangest fact of all, the chicken is the closest living relative to a T-Rex!