At precisely Six Thirty am last Saturday morning, at an undisclosed location in the heart of the Cal Heights community, a solitary cockerel crowed his celebrated croon. “Cock-a-doodle doo!” the feathered beast exclaimed puffing Bixby breath from his bird lungs into the crisp dawn air. If asked why he did it, I’m sure this rooster would struggle to pinpoint his motives. It was just something he did every morning with the rising of the sun (and also sometimes at three or two pm) compelled by nothing save the deep dark drummings of his deoxyribonucleic acid.
And this morning, by all outward signs, should have been no different from any other. Just a furtive caterwaul to satiate the demands of biology. A quick cacophony, embarrassing really in it’s compulsiveness, and then on to the hen house where he was to guard those nests from foe or fox.
Or at least that’s how it should have happened. But when old Mr. Rooster let out that initial blast of bird-brained bedlam the very earth beneath him shook, shuddered, and cracked open like yellow food cake left in the oven for too prolonged a period of time! The chasm grew in size and shape threatening to swallow up the very chanticleer who seemingly called the rift into being. And beneath the fault, down deep in the earth’s mantle, almost imperceptible to the eyes of man or avian, dark gears shifted. Cogs turned. And a great machine (burning only clean fossil fuels) coughed and sputtered into life.
The cockerel stared into the mechanical rift with awe-filled reverence. And the voice of a freshly awoken hero erupted from the depths of this secret lair.
“Goooooooooood Morrrrrrrrrrniiiiiiin’ Biiiiiiiiiiiixxxxbyyyy!!!!!”
And then, with the speed of Aesop’s tortoise, The Knolls Ranger flew up into the air! With the grinding of gears his underground home closed up beneath him. “Well,” the Ranger declared doing a sun salutation that Andrea Tetsa of Free Spirit Yoga taught him. “Now that I’m up I may as well join the Bixby Knolls Strollers.”
The strollers, a weekend walking club in the Bixby Knolls area meet at It’s A Grind Coffeehouse (4245 Atlantic Avenue) at 7:30 am every Saturday morning to get fit, meet their neighbors, check out the local businesses, and take a stroll through the neighborhood!
By utilizing Long Beach’s wonderful public transit system, the ranger was able to catch up with the strollers and enjoy the sights and sounds.
One such stroll site was The Petroleum Club Lot 33, where Boy Scout Scott Eastman and his fellow Boy Scouts were planting trees and mulching the soil.
Thank you Boy Scouts of America for your concerted efforts on Bixby Knolls beautification, and thank you Mr. Rooster for waking me up for it. (Please don’t reveal the location of the ranger cave.)
Tags: Bixby Knolls, Chanticleer, Cockerel, It's A Grind Coffee House, Rooster, The Bixby Knolls Strollers, The Boy Scouts of America, Top Secret Underground Lair
