Go the spurs!

Driving home this evening I was amazed to see a parliament of ... starlings, up and down the power wires alongside of the road, strung out like black pearls on a necklace ... nah, they didn't look at all like pearls, more hunched 'rabbits of the sky' as some farmers call them, roosting after a day stealing grain from the fields and I was reminded of a great time I'd had years and years ago on the farm in front of which the bird-encrusted wires hung heavily (whew!).
There were wild roosters ruling the then-abandoned farm, strutting about during the day, hammering their hens mercilessly and creating merry hell for any humans that wandered onto the ramshackle farm for a nose-about. The local Lions club (Roar!) decided to do the township a service by capturing the flint-eyed cocks and, as a then-member of the club (Roar!) I signed up for the cockerel-clean-up. We struck at dusk, as the roosters settled onto the branches of the overgrown macrocarpa. My task, as youngest and most nimble Lion (Roar!) was to scramble up the trees (they chose high perches!), slip my fingers over their feet as they clutched the branch, and drag them, screeching (I thought, bellowing, they were big birds. 'Bellowing' is a bit much though, screeching will do) down to the waiting Lions-men below. I had to take care not to get stuck with the enormous spurs that sprouted from the back of each cocky-leg, or shredded by the beaks at the other end.
I caught a dozen birds, all black, or so my memory tells me. I had a lot of fun doing it but was a little saddened that the reign of the roosters ended, at my hand, simply because they were 'getting out of control'. Now-a-days, I'd leave them be and enjoy their waywardness, perhaps even egg them on as they cocked-a-snook at all and sundry. Etc.