I took this photo of Strut a few minutes before he attacked Maria, charging her again and again and drawing a bit of blood from one of her legs. It was not a serious wound, but it was the fourth or fifth time Strut had gone after Maria or me, and the attacks were increasing in frequency and getting more serious. If I have a non-negotiable line about animals in my mind, it is that I will not have an animal on the farm that harms people, or that is aggressive to other animals. This came very much to the fore some years ago when my border collie Orson attacked three people, one of them severely, drawing blood in the neck. I chose to euthanize him, and I wrote the book “A Good Dog” about Orson, and many people were deeply angered or troubled by my decision. That is not a factor for me.

As roosters get older, they often turn aggressive. This was not a difficult decision for me. As with Orson, I could no longer tell anyone who was attacked that I didn’t know it might happen. Some people can live with animals who hurt people or other animals, and that is their business. I can’t.  Too many people come through the farm, lots of them children, and I do not believe in giving animals who hurt people away because I know they will almost certainly do it again. Strut was a great rooster, dutiful, protective of the hens, proud and photogenic. I have to say when I photograph an animal (or person) as often as I have photographed Strut, I get attached to them in a particular way. When I saw the scratches Maria’s leg, I saw that I was back in the real world of real animals, where I am often drawn in my life with them. We do not live in a no-kill world here. The farm is the Mother and always comes first.

I was somewhat spoiled by my first rooster Winston, a dignified gentleman who loved to hang around with me and the dogs. The next three were not like him. I thought Strut was such a rooster until the last few weeks. I am grateful for his love of my camera, and his unfailing duty to the chickens. He was always guarding them and keeping an eye out for danger. I imagine he got it into his head somehow that Maria and I were roosters or some creatures he needed to protect the hens from. We will never know.

When I saw the blood on Maria’s leg,  I went into the house, got the .22 rifle, went out into the pasture where Strut was marching with his hens.  I shot him twice through the heart and once in the head and he died quickly and without struggle. Maria took him out to the woods, and found a chewed-up deer leg and left him, an offering to the wild, a better use of his body than going into the trash. The way he stood with the chickens always seemed to symbolize family to me, in the best sense. But of course, that is my projection. A rooster is a rooster.

Killing a rooster is not a big deal, nor did I think it was. But he had done nothing intentionally wrong, he was just doing what many roosters do. It makes me sad to kill so beautiful a creature, and I think every time you do violence to something, you also do it to yourself. And I will miss the sound of his crowing. But we live on the boundary between the world of pets and the world of animals, and being here is a reminder not to get too comfortable. It means getting pulled back and forth.