North Bend residents pen rowdy bird Raucous rooster round-up

Jack’s roaming days are over.

Jack’s roaming days are over.

After a two-week stint in “solitary confinement,” the large, red rooster that terrorized visitors, businesses and homeowners near the Spotted Owl Folk Art Gallery on North Bend Way, is now strutting his stuff around a new custom coop.

Gallery owner Bob Antone said that the bird, the sole survivor of four Polish chicks gifted to Antone’s son from Opstad Elementary School teacher Karen Eddy, has made quite an impression on gallery visitors during his first year.

Mildly put, the rooster has a strong guard instinct.

“Once he rushed me even before I had the chance to get out of my car,” said gallery regular Steve Thoreson. “That bird would sit back on its tail feathers, stick its feet up in the air and try to spur you.”

Jack’s progression into rooster-hood meant big changes in his personality.

“When they were little, we used to hold them and stroke their feathers until they were in a trance,” Antone said of the chicks.

But coyotes quickly picked off two of the young hens, leaving Jack and sibling Suzie to brave the winter. The two roosted among the branches of the apple, walnut and hemlock trees around the gallery, but Suzie didn’t make it long past February.