Not too long after we moved to Arkansas, my daddy acquired a batch of half-grown Bantam game chickens from one of his uncles. They were pretty things, and smaller than our regular chickens. "Little Mo" was the rooster, and he was a first cousin to Ranch Wife's "rooster from hell."
(Wikipedia photo -- Little Mo didn't look quite like this; he was more colorful,
but this was the best photo I could find)
Our farm's outhouse was on the back side of the chicken yard, and you had to go through the chicken yard to use the facilities. Little Mo would attack anything that moved, and he had spurs a that were a good inch, or more, long. All of us had a few scars on our legs from being spurred at one time or another, but usually you could shoo him off before he did much damage. One morning, he jumped my mama, wouldn't "shoo," and tore up both her legs something terrible. She came in the house crying and bloody. He had made gashes in her poor legs that must have been 6" long. That was it! Unlike Ranch Wife's hero, I had no gun (probably couldn't have hit the broad side of the barn if I had one), but my brother's baseball bat was on the back porch. I grabbed it, ran to the chicken yard with hot-blooded murder on my mind and, screaming and hollering at this wicked little bird, committed rooster-cide. I do believe that is the most angry I have ever been in my whole life. I'm not proud of murdering him, though; it left me feeling pretty sick.
I remember that Daddy wasn't too happy that I had killed his game rooster, but didn't fuss at me very much after he saw Mama's legs. Mama was in her early 50's when this event occurred, and still had faint traces of the scars on her legs when she died at age 86.
