Who killed the Red Rooster?

Have you ever done something wrong and tried to hide what you had done?   How did that turn out for you?    I asked my grandmother, Sylvia Rayda Eskelson Hayes, to tell me about her memories of growing up.  This one of the stories that she told me.  She was laughing when she told it to me.  Do you think you would be laughing too?   This story is about her brother, Oral.

"We had an old red rooster.  He was a vicious old fellow because he loved chasing and flying at us every chance he got.  This one day he had attacked Oral by coming at him with his wings just a flapping.

Oral was young, I think about six but he could flip his flipper as straight as an arrow.  So in haste he pulled back and let the rooster have it in the head.   Sure enough it toppled over dead.  He felt really bad because he had killed mother's rooster.  He felt sure there would be a scolding for him.

So he racked his young brain trying to find an easy way to let mother know the rooster was dead.  Finally he hit on an idea.  He rolled a big rock on the head of the rooster and came running into the house to find mother.   He told her that a big rock had fallen out of the sky right on old Reddies head, as we called him, killing him dead.

We all rushed out to see what had happened.  Sure enough there was a rock on his head.  Mother and father studied the situation over very carefully but said nothing.

In a few days, mother's chance came.  She casually talked things over with Oral.  She sat him on her lap and holding him in her arms she said, "Son, if someone were to give you a quarter, do you think you could guess how the rooster got killed?"

"Oh, yes!"  said Oral.  "I shot him with my flipper."

"How did the rock get on his head?" asked mother.

"Mama, I put it there."

Mother always had a way of getting us to tell the truth by her sweet kind way of handling situations as they arose rather than through fear.  By this method, I am sure it instilled in our young hearts such love and admiration for her.  We had no desire to tell falsehoods to keep from being punished.

People in the above story:

• Oral James Eskelson b. 4 March 1904, Francis, Summit, Utah; d. 7 January 1989, American Fork, Utah, Utah
• Oscar Eskelson (father) b. 26 April 1858, Florence, Douglas, Nebraska; d. 2 March 1935, Francis, Summit, Utah
• Melissa Orilla Fraughton Eskelson(mother) b. 18 December 1862, Hebert City, Wasatch, Utah; d. 7 June 1913, Francis, Summit, Utah
• Sylvia Rayda Eskelson Hayes (sister, who told the story) b. 1 July 1901, Francis, Summit, Utah; d. 2 October 1971, American Fork, Utah, Utah