One of the more amusing stories to make it into the newspapers this past summer was the saga of Maurice the rooster. Vacationers on the island of Oléron in southwestern France had complained that Maurice’s daily wake-up calls had ruined their sleep. They did more than complain, they sued the rooster’s owner in court, claiming that the bird was a public nuisance. Thousands of French people signed a petition in defense of Maurice and, after a long legal process and a great deal of lighthearted publicity the judge ruled in his favor. A rooster has the right to crow, said the judge, it is in his nature. Maurice became quite famous, just for doing what nature intended. He even had his picture in The New York Times, twice, and quite right too.
Vacationers often make wrong choices. They look for relaxation in some quiet rural place but, once they are there, they miss the sounds of the big city – the roar and screech of traffic, the sirens, the screams and the gunshots that make up the background music of urban life. The deep countryside is quiet, very quiet at night, to the point of being scary, but you can get used to that. What gets through to even the most insensitive brain is unexpected noise in the middle of silence, and that was the crime of Maurice the rooster. In the silent dawn hour the rooster’s wake-up call crashes in like an artillery shell, with shocking effect. “I am awake, how about you?” he seems to shout. The farmers and the hens sleep through it all, of course. It’s just like traffic or sirens to them.
We can sleep through almost any amount of noise, if it is familiar noise. I once lived right next to a main railroad station in London that generated a shattering decibel level, day and night. But I slept there like the proverbial baby. The same was true when we lived in a French village near the church clock, just a few yards away, loudly chimed the hours and the quarter hours all night. It was as good as a sleeping pill.
The general rule about noise seems to be that animals should be quiet, but humans can make as much as they like. It is part of being Lords of Creation I suppose. But do we need to be such noisy lords? Lawn mowers, leaf blowers and all the machinery of what I call “backhoe gardening” make the quiet suburbs almost intolerable at times. A boom box car drives past our house about midnight every night, shaking the windows. The boy who drives this car must wake hundreds of people every night – I suppose a judge would say it's in his nature – but the only consolation from me is that he will soon be deaf.
I’m sensitive to noise myself, but I try to tolerate natural sounds. But sometimes my tolerance is tested. The other night, after the boom box car had passed, an owl started up right outside our bedroom window. He was, I think, a barred owl – a big and beautiful bird with a spooky and penetrating cry. He had lot to say – and he kept on saying it. I told myself that the barred owl is a fine bird who deserves his moment on the stage. But at that moment, just for a moment, I could sympathize with those sleep-deprived vacationers who wanted to silence Maurice the noble rooster.
Copyright: David Bouchier
