It is with sincere regret that I have to announce the demise of Fabio, our spectacularly handsome but not particularly bright, nor especially masculine, rooster.

What can one say about Fabio…

When Fabio first came to stay with us we assumed that he (along with his four sisters) was a hen.

Then, about a week or so later, there was a strangled gurgling noise to be heard coming from the coop. Was it a…crow? Upon closer inspection one of the “hens” had grown longer feathers and a bigger, redder comb that the others. Bugger!

Yes indeedy, we had ourselves a rooster.

Fabio grew to be really, really good-looking and had the most beautiful black feathers shot with greens and blues. So, instead of abandoning him at the Lookout Layby on State Highway 1 (where most of the Whangarei area’s undesirable roosters end up) we decided to forgive him for his inability to supply us with fresh eggs, and keep him.

Fabio had a deformed leg, and this caused him to lean a little to the left and richochet off the hens, or off the side of the coop. He was always the last one to get his peckle’s worth of laying pellets – nope, he never did cop on to the new automatic feeding bucket system which required a single tap on the release valve on the bottom to send a sprinkle of pellets to the ground. Instead, Fabio loitered in the edge of the mob of feeding hens, then dived in when there was a gap in the ruckus.

He was always one for a spot of crowing, and could be heard announcing daybreak in the afternoon, usually about 2 o’clock-ish.

Regretably the deformed leg contracted an abcess, which sent Fabio spiralling into a deep malaise, from which he never recovered.

Fabio was the Derek Zoolander of the chicken world and will be sorely missed.

R.I.P., dear Fabio.