Another Metamorphosis

As Ted awoke one morning from a nightmare (related to culinary matters; but that is another story), he found himself transformed into a majestic rooster.

Roach, meanwhile, was prattling away on the electric telephone, demanding to know whether—if they went down to Hammond—they’d ever come back. Of course he was. Roach was always going on about something. I overheard Ted saying, “As far as I’m concerned, that would just be throwing yourself away! Hammond? Hammond?!?” Who knows what that was all about.

The way I saw matters, there were worse things than a majestic rooster into which one could find oneself transformed. A school bus, say; or, the gods forbid, an accordion. A rooster is at least sentient.

Given the events of the past several years, Ted and I had both gotten by relatively unscathed, so I believed he should be grateful for the “problem” of having found himself made into a rooster—and a majestic one, at that. It even irked me a little that he seemed not to have considered the benefits of this development: he could get rid of a clock or two, not to mention his comb.

And I told him so.

Ted was not amused. He strutted about the room, crowing loudly, pecking at the carpets, and speaking in increasingly staccato sentences. I knew that the days ahead were to become even more challenging than usual….