Pepper and Little Byrd

Ten years ago, Byrd and I lived in a little condo community. One of our neighbors was a single woman who worked all day, and while she was away at work, she let her little dog run loose.

This was both annoying for all the residents and dangerous for the little dog, because it liked to chase cars in the parking lot, bark, and poo everywhere. The woman probably thought her cute little dog slept all day on her front porch, because that's where the dog was when she left, and that's where it was when she came home (it could hear her car coming and would race to her front door to wait for her).

So since I was a college kid at the time, I "adopted" the dog during the day. It got to hang out with me inside while I was home. The first thing I did was give it a bath and brush it, because it smelled terrible and had fleas.

We soon learned that the dog's name was Pepper, because when the woman got home in the evening and discovered her dog was not waiting on the front porch, she started screaming "PEPPER!!! PEPPER!!!" I let Pepper out the back door and he ran around the unit to the front to greet his mom, and they went inside.

This was a routine until Pepper's mom finally figured out where her dog was spending time. Then she would come over and knock on our door each evening and retrieve Pepper from us. It seemed she sort of appreciated the free petsitting.

During this time we also ended up with a baby chicken that was dumped at the pet store where Byrd worked (sound familiar? See Fred's story). We named the chick Little Byrd.

Little Byrd and Pepper became friends. Pepper watched out for LB when he was having some free time in the yard.

LB turned out to be a huge black rooster (sound familiar? See Peepers's story).

Now, the difference between LB and Peepers is that LB could and would fly. He often flew over the condo's backyard fence and into neighboring back yards. Another problem was that we were not really allowed to have fowl in the condos. And LB crowed, too!

So Byrd managed to find a farm that would take not-so-Little Byrd. He *claims* it was a rooster heaven where Little Byrd had lots of hens to call his own. But I'm a bit suspicious, since he makes this farm sound more and more wonderful each time he reassures me that he did not send LB to be made into someone's dinner.