The Secret Life of Poultry: Earl the Shop Chicken
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Back in August of 2018, a feral rooster wandered up to a mechanic shop. R and R Garage was nestled between a highway and a rural wooded lot in North Carolina. The relationship that transpired between the shop employees and the rooster quickly became a local legend.
It was a Thursday when the employees heard a rooster crowing behind the shop. At their location chickens were common and occasionally they broke free of their pens, so they wrote it off. The next day the sound was closer and they went looking for the source. To their surprise, there was a huge yellow rooster scratching around between the vehicles in the back like he belonged there.
The guys were going home for the weekend and the rooster was skittish around people. It was clear from his appearance that he’d been outside for a while and wasn’t used to human contact. They tossed him some snacks and closed up shop, hoping for the best.
At the beginning of the next work week, the rooster was still hanging around. Someone joked about naming him Earl, and it stuck. The employees kept feeding Earl little bits of food, and he made it clear that he wasn’t planning on leaving any time soon.
Time passed, and Earl became a fixture at R and R Garage. Regular customers began to recognize him, and word spread. “Customers started dropping off chicken feed or brought him treats,” said Nevin, an employee at the shop. Earl learned to trust and rely not only on the employees, but the customers as well.
As Earl became more comfortable around people, he began venturing into the shop. The mechanics would talk to him like he was a regular employee, and Earl would come sit under the vehicles with them and watch them work.
During the day, Earl would lounge about and keep the guys company. He was tasked with eating the bugs and spiders around the garage. At night, he would roost up high in a gum tree to avoid predators on the ground. “We’d worry about him, but he was happy,” Nevin said. “We closed him inside the garage quite a few times when the weather was bad.”
Earl became accustomed to the noise and activity of the garage. Local papers started running stories about him and he became an honorary employee as his fame spread. Customers would come in and ask for Earl.
R and R garage had shirts made, and they began getting letters from fans from all over the United States. “Someone in Tennessee sent us some money for feed, and a Canadian paper even interviewed us!” Nevin said, laughing. The shop kept track of where all of Earl’s fans were from so they could see how far his reach was.
It was dangerous living as a shop chicken, however, because wild animals lived in the woods behind the lot. Earl would wander around and evaded numerous predators on these outings. “It wasn’t just at night, he was chased by a fox at about 1:30 in the afternoon one day,” Nevin reported. Earl ran, clucking, into the shop and the fox made a beeline back to the woods.
On a Saturday, Earl was chased by a stray beagle into the highway in front of the shop, and he ended up stopping all four lanes of traffic. He got into all sorts of trouble but knew how to find help.
During the weekends when the shop was closed, Earl would wander over to some of the houses that were on the other side of the woods. There, he was labeled as a nuisance because one of the residents was afraid of his size. The resident called animal control, who gave them permission to shoot Earl.
The risk of being shot, combined with a couple of close encounters with predators, lead the shop employees to find a safer home for Earl. It was a difficult decision to make because they’d all grown so attached. They’d talk to him daily and didn’t like the idea of transplanting him somewhere else, but it had to be done.
One of the techs, John, ended up taking Earl in and getting some hens for him. “We were worried about sticking him in some little coop since he’s so outdoorsy.” Nevin said. They made him a 15’x40’ pen in hopes that Earl would still be happy and still feel like he had enough space to roam.
“He’s doing pretty well now,” Nevin updated me. “He’s got some babies, and whenever someone comes in asking for him, we tell them that we sent him to a Single’s Retreat and he’s living his good life.”
Earl spent about a year living in and around the garage before retiring to his permanent home. He flies the coop occasionally to live out some of his crazy younger days, but it’s easy to put him home, and as far as any of the shop employees can tell, he’s as happy as he’s ever been. In Earl’s case, it took a village to raise a rooster.
Originally published in the August/September 2020 issue of Backyard Poultry and regularly vetted for accuracy.
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