Jordan Peterson has said that commitment to anything requires a pound of flesh. He’s right, and nowhere is that more evident than in the keeping of chickens.

My own experience with chickens comes at the behest of others. Because I am still waiting for my farm to come in yet inexplicably own two donkeys, I have, for many years been a tenant — some might say a more accurate term is “squatter” — on other people’s farms. As such, I often find myself interacting with other people’s chickens.

This has been interesting. Sometimes there are free eggs, in colors I didn’t know eggs could be. Once, a chicken hopped in my Jeep when I wasn’t looking, and I didn’t realize there was a chicken in the backseat until I was a few miles away. Hens are great. Roosters, I’ve come to learn, are evil.

At the barn where I’m currently squatting, there resides a rooster who decided to expand his territory to the room.where the horse feed is kept. This is a problem since I feed the horses three mornings a week and need to access the bins of grain, and for reasons unknown, I’m on his no-fly list. No amount of negotiation or food scraps will distract him. Lately, I’ve been having to arm myself with a broom in order to cross into the occupied territory. Once, I was not diligent enough and tried to get by him without weaponry, and the beast attacked, drawing blood and leaving three long scratches on my exposed legs.

The myths are wrong about the devil being a goat. The devil doesn’t have horns. He has feathers and a wattle.

There is no greater indignity for a fully grown adult than being chased by a chicken, as I now have been. This is why, in the case of Big Roo, I have decided to side with the killer.

Big Roo, as reported by various Florida news outlets last year, was a rooster who lived in a trailer park and spent his days doing what roosters do, which is to terrorize innocent civilians. One day, a neighbor took a stick to Big Roo and hit the rooster in the head, killing it. When Big Roo’s owner came home to find his rooster dead in a ditch, he called the police, and Big Roo’s assailant was arrested and jailed for animal abuse.

The case made the local news not because it was newsworthy — as the perpetrator said, “Chickens die every day, people” — but because the key players were unintentionally hilarious. Among their many one-liners, Big Roo’s assailant said his neighbor “had called the chicken police on me,” and the rooster’s owner said he knew something was wrong with Big Roo because when he would get home, “he would always come and chase me.”

Not surprisingly, the felony animal cruelty charges that were initially filed against James Nix were soon dropped, although the trauma of spending 30 hours in jail and being attacked by a chicken will stay with him forever.

There are several takeaways for the rest of us. First, relationships are fragile. One day, you are living peaceably in your Jacksonville trailer park, and you’re on speaking terms with your neighbors and all is the right with the world, and the next, you’re on the local news and in either jail or the ER, and you’re going to have to find a new place to live and a new pet, maybe one that doesn’t chase you.

Second, in the field of entertainment, there is a huge market, an insatiable appetite, for things that southerners say as they go about their everyday lives. We already knew this from the success of the Sh%t Southern Women Say videos, but now we know YouTube virility can be totally unscripted. If you are seeking a lucrative career, go to Florida with a laptop and a microphone.

And finally, if you know someone with a rooster, move, or carry a big stick. A broom works for me most of the time, although some days I also need a pitchfork. I am careful just to sweep the rooster and not hit him in head.