kingdom come

You can blame it on Beach. She started it. Started the end. "Dad, have you seen the big rooster's foot? Something is wrong with it." 

You could blame me. I had been waiting for this moment. I supported the coup d'etat. A secret agent of the second rooster.  I had faint hopes on the one before him but now I am sure.

The old rooster ran the coop and the yard like a mob boss. Nutritiously camera shy hiding behind the hens. Not so rough but no longer gentle either. He moved old and he walked tired. I think of Nicholas the II and how dangerous it is to be a king.

When assigning blame you might consider the infection in the old birds foot or even age itself.  But you can't blame the ax or the ax-man.       

"Do you think he knows?" I ask the ax-man as the second rooster moved carefully around the edge of the scene:a silent blade and a still body on the ground. 

"Oh he knows." He answered leaving the ax and the body where they stopped. Like a headhunter leaving heads on a spike. 

 I'm not sure the second rooster does know that the flock is now his but I know somewhere inside his little mind is the imprint of the last moments of the old rooster and the ax.  

The coop and all the hens are yours.

You will get your bill on the way out.