The Day I Fought a Rooster… and Almost Started an Ice Cream War

Some days in life are just… louder than others.

Yesterday was one of those days.

The kind of day where you look back and think, Did that really all happen in the span of a few hours?

It started at my brother’s house. I had stayed the night after doing prom hair and was loading up the car to head home.

Now, my brother has chickens. And roosters.

And apparently one of those roosters woke up that morning and chose violence.

As I’m loading bags into the car, that rooster sneaks up behind me and pecks the back of my leg. Not a polite little peck either. The kind that makes you jump and say words you probably shouldn’t say in front of a rooster.

So, I instinctively kicked my leg back to get him away from me.

That rooster flew backwards… landed… and then charged me again like we were in some kind of barnyard duel.

At this point I’m thinking, What exactly is the correct protocol for escaping an angry rooster? Because this was not covered in life training.

So, I did what any rational adult woman would do.

I jumped in my car and grabbed the only weapon available…

My umbrella.

Now picture this.

A grown woman in a driveway holding an umbrella like a medieval sword while a rooster is staring her down.

Sure enough, he comes at me again.

So, I swung that umbrella like a golf club.

He backed off for a minute… but not before deciding to try one more time when we were leaving.

And then he came after Everly.

Mama bear activated.

Umbrella swing number two.

Rooster defeated.

At this point I thought the excitement for the day was over.

I was wrong.

On the way to visit my dad, Everly and I stopped in Vernon so she could get an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. She loves the ice cream but not the cone, so when she’s done she usually feeds the leftover cone to birds.

Later, when we stopped in Marble Falls to grab some real food at Lane’s Chicken, there was a grassy area nearby with birds walking around. Everly still had the cone, so I told her to roll down the window and toss it on the grass for the birds.

Completely harmless.

Or so I thought.

As we pulled up to the drive-through window, a man I hadn’t even noticed behind my car suddenly started yelling.

Loud.

Aggressive.

He walked up shouting things like, “What is wrong with you people?”

Before I could even process what was happening, he grabbed the ice cream cone from the grass and threw it back at my car.

At that point I rolled Everly’s window up immediately because he felt unpredictable and honestly a little scary.

The poor young guy working the drive-through window looked completely shocked and asked if I was okay. He even offered to clean off my car and ran to the front of the store to try to get the man’s license plate.

But the guy had already driven away.

And the car definitely wasn’t quiet.

Everly and I just sat there for a second in total shock.

You know those moments where something happens so fast your brain is still trying to catch up with what just happened? That was us.

And of course, when you’re a parent, you don’t really get the luxury of sitting in that shock for very long. Your kid is watching you, trying to figure out if they should be scared too.

So, I started doing the thing moms do. Talking through it out loud.

Explaining that sometimes people have bad days. Sometimes people react in ways that don’t make sense. And sometimes the safest thing you can do is exactly what we did — stay in the car, roll the windows up, and let the situation pass.

Once we pulled away, Everly and I kept talking about it for a while.

Partly because she needed reassurance.

And partly because, if I’m being honest, I probably did too.

The strange part is that we weren’t even done with the day yet.

We were still on our way to visit my dad in the hospital before heading home.

It’s about a 40-minute drive from my brother’s house to see him, and the drive home after that is another hour and a half or two hours depending on traffic.

So, the two of us just kept driving… still replaying the whole moment in our heads.

By the time we finally pulled into the hospital parking lot to see my dad, the whole day felt a little surreal.

In the span of a few hours I had fought off a rooster, had an ice cream cone thrown at my car by a stranger, and was now walking into a hospital room to sit with someone I love.

Life has a strange way of stacking moments like that together.

Some ridiculous.

Some scary.

Some heavy.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, you just keep moving forward… hoping the next part of the day is a little gentler than the last.

Hopefully without roosters.

Or flying ice cream cones.