Cassidy was a rooster. He was quite a handsome rooster, a descendant of the chickens the Polynesians originally brought from Tahiti when they came here many years ago. Chickens now run wild throughout the island. Cassidy had multicolored plumage of mostly oranges and dark reds, festooned with a cascade of black tail feathers. He and his harem of three hens were always pecking around all over the three acres of our property.

We built a small guesthouse over the garage. We have always called it “The Little House”. We lived in it for a year while our “Main House” was being built. Over that time we got to know all the local men who were working on the house. It became a custom to go out and “talk story” several times a day. Shoot the breeze. Chit chat. Since we have three grown sons on the mainland, these young men became family to us. We talked with them about their wives and kids and life in general in the islands. We learned so much valuable information about our island as well as becoming very fond of all of them.

The builder and these men were so kind and patient with us. As the building progressed, almost every day we came up with some suggestion or change we would like to make in the architect’s blueprints. Having the owners on site every day second-guessing their work would generally be a big pain to most construction workers, but they did not seem to mind a bit. If the ideas could be incorporated into the blueprints without any major structural changes, their attitude was, “why not?”

The guys had two huge piles of building debris, one on each side of the house where they threw all kinds of trash. To their credit, when the house was finished, they carefully removed every scrap of it.

One late afternoon after they had left we were surveying the day’s progress. I spotted a scrawny little gray cat with her one kitten, eating the McDonald’s hamburger wrappings that the guys had thrown on the trash pile. In addition to wild chickens there are feral cats all over the island too. My husband told me not to feed them. I told him I wouldn’t.

The next day I drove down the hill and stocked up on cat food. Now, really, how are you going to let a hungry mother and her baby starve? I stashed a bowl of food and another bowl of fresh water hidden in the pile of lumber debris. I even got away with it for a few days until my husband told me that the chickens were eating our cat’s food. So then I had to stand guard every afternoon to shoo the chickens away while our cats ate.

That worked for a while until one of Cassidy’s wives showed up with a dozen little fuzzy-wuzzy baby chicks eating away at the leftover cat food. You can’t have baby chicks eating cat food so the next day I hotfooted down the hill and found a feed store. I came back with 50 pounds of “Scratch” chicken-food as recommended by the feed store people.

Why not?

It became a 5:00 PM ritual with me out there feeding all my livestock of cats and chickens. I didn’t feed them in the morning because there was always too much activity going on during the day so the cats and chickens sort of hid out. The animals showed up after the guys left for the day.

For several weeks a new man had been working with the crew. He was Samoan and a huge man, strong as a bull. He must have been seven feet tall. The other men called him the “Human Winch” The house was coming along nicely. The men were ready to hoist up the monstrous rafters and beams to make the roof on top of the second story. Three or four of the men got on one end, and “The Human Winch” got on the other end by himself. Then they hauled it right up there. It was a quite a feat to watch.

Several days later around noon we heard a ruckus out in the yard. We ran out to see what was going on in time to see Cassidy take off, flying with a long line attached to his foot. The guys were standing around looking sheepish. They had caught Cassidy and staged a cockfight with one of “The Human Winch’s” roosters. Now, it wasn’t illegal to raise fighting cocks out here but it was illegal to fight them. Go figure. Part of the culture.

The next day Cassidy showed up with his harem and chicks, the line still intact around his foot. To my horror the foot had turned black and he was limping badly. I gave “The Human Winch” a thorough chewing out, telling him that Cassidy was our family pet, to catch him and get that line off his foot right now before gangrene set in and he died!

I was looking up at him and shaking my finger at him the whole time. He said he would and, grinning at me, told me that Cassidy was a fine fighter. He would trade me two of his roosters for ours. I chewed him out some more and told him no way!

Dutifully all the men tried and tried over and over again to chase Cassidy down and catch him, to no avail. He was always too fast for them. In spite of his bad leg he could really move or fly off if necessary. Then he was gone for several days and we were all afraid he was dead.

One early morning the men were out there hollering at us that our rooster was back! Sure enough, he and his hens and chicks were pecking around as nonchalant as ever - but his foot had dropped off! He had to “hop along” on one foot but he managed just fine. Hence, his name.

We had several weeks of heavy rain so the men could not work on the main house. Finally it cleared up into a bright, beautiful morning. The guys showed up with their usual coffee and donuts. They stood around talking story for a few minutes and then got in their pickup trucks and left. We called the builder to see what was wrong. Were they out of supplies or what. He told us that that because of the rain this was the first nice day in quite a while that the men could go fishing - so they did! Makes sense. The people here have their priorities set just right, a perfect balance between work and the leisure activities that make life worthwhile.

The house was coming along to completion. “The Human Winch” and the men spent about three weeks on the stiff pitch of the roof methodically pounding in “Hurricane Clips” That was another amazing achievement to watch! They were sure footed as mountain goats. At times they seemed to be walking on air up there to nail down the shingles around the edges.

Meanwhile, Cassidy and his progeny were growing and expanding. Word got around the island population of chickens that Paul and Jean were having nightly dinner parties. At 5:00 PM they were all gathered around. Cassidy made sure that his babies and hens had their fill first before he or any of the other party crashers did. While he was minding his brood as they pecked away he actually let me touch him on the top of his comb! He never let me go as far as petting his back however.

There could have been a lot of rape going on around the yard, but every time some young rooster tried to mount a hen, Cassidy would immediately come hopping or flying and break it up. One of the hens actually climbed the stairs up to the Little House from time to time and laid an egg on the doormat.

About that time at dusk we noted a circle of frogs showing up below the bridge at the upper level between the Little House and the Main House. These were technically toads because there is no body of water nearby. But we always called them frogs since they looked like frogs to us. It took a while for us to figure out what was going on there.

Right after feeding the chickens and cats, it was my habit to plug in the bug zapper we had hung under the eaves of the bridge. As the insects hit the zapper and were electrocuted the bugs dropped down to the waiting frogs. It was as if the frogs had announced, “Come on over to Paul and Jean's! They have a barbecue for us every night!”

We moved into the Main House as I nightly continued to feed our growing numbers of critters. It was getting a bit out of hand especially in the backyard in the sense that you had to watch where you stepped! The mother cat and grown offspring moved on when another cat showed up and had a couple of tiger kittens on the shelf in the garage.

A year later out of the blue, a level-five hurricane named Iniki descended on us! We lost a total of six out of nine sliding glass doors and windows. But despite losing a few shingles and some tarpaper, we kept that roof! Things were a mess, but compared to many other people on the island, our damage was minimal and mostly cosmetic.

I do not know where our permanent boarders rode out the storm but the next day cats and chickens were nonchalantly sauntering through the first floor of the house as if nothing had happened. We managed to cannibalize the upstairs and Little House sliding glass door screens to enclose the downstairs before very many of our menagerie figured out they could climb the stairs.

We drove over people's lawns whenever we couldn't make it through the downed trees and telephone lines to get to our builder's house. He already had our old crew up repairing his roof. We were first in line. Our builder said his men had to get paid to take care of their own damage before any insurance claims came in. That could take months. They were experienced from a previous hurricane. My husband told him to fix our roof before any rain came in and did more damage. We would pay right away. Within four days we had the old crew of men back up on our roof. They were pleased to find that Cassidy was still around ruling his fiefdom.

We ran out of “Scratch” for the chickens. The feed store was so badly damaged that it was in the process of being permanently closed when I got there. The owner was out of “Scratch” but he gave me a couple of plastic bags full from a big one that had been torn open and was all wet. He wouldn't let me pay him anything. After that the chickens just had to forage for themselves as they had before I took them in. Most of them wandered off but Cassidy and a handful of his concubines and offspring stayed. The cats remained of course.

Over time we cleared up all the hurricane mess and got back to normal living. One day Cassidy just didn't show up. We watched for him day after day but no Cassidy. We finally accepted the fact that he had probably gone to that big Chicken Coop in the Sky. We never saw him again.

From time to time we see a big handsome two-legged rooster, one with multicolored plumage of mostly oranges and dark reds, festooned with a cascade of black tail feathers. We smile and think, “That has to be one of Cassidy's great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandsons”.

Cassidy was a class act.