The Sardook

There is someone you need to be introduced to--my verbal pet. I call him my verbal pet because he doesn't actually belong to me...but he's such a part of my life and I talk about him alot. He is the Sardook.

Let me explain.

My apartment is rather long and narrow. (Much like yours, Princess William.) The kitchen is right in the middle of the length of the apartment, and the bathroom is just to its left. And like most French apartments, the toilet is in a different room than the bathroom. (For as one French person explained to me about this separation, "Why would you do the dirtiest thing you do in the same room that you are trying to get the cleanest that you can get?") Unlike most French apartments, the toilet is not right next to the bathroom, though.

You have to walk through the kitchen into the laundry room (that may have been just a balcony in the past...it really seems like the ceiling and windows were an afterthought), and then the toilet is a small room off the laundry room. The toilet room feels very much like an outhouse.

It feels like an outhouse because the door doesn't go all the way to floor, so it has the sense of being in an open air stall. It feels like an outhouse because there is an opening in the wall above the toilet that is just covered with a wooden board, so it has the sense of being an open air--to all the world outside my apartment--stall. It feels like an outhouse because all that open air is bringing in the smells of outside--mainly cow smell (which I still haven't figured out where the cow smell is coming from since I haven't yet seen or heard any cows)--to um, balance the smell of the inside (toilet). It feels like an outhouse because every time I go in there a rooster crows.

Enter the Sardook.

The Sardook is the rooster who lives just on the other side of the wall of my toilet. There is something wrong with him. He crows all the live long day. He seems to have no sense of time or that he's only supposed to crow in the morning.

As I've been learning verbs during the past weeks, but still have such a limited vocabulary, I was composing sentences with the few words I knew, and you better believe Sardook (rooster) is one of them. You can imagine Teacher's laughter as I formed phrases about the Sardook.

"I will eat the Sardook."

"The Sardook never sleeps."

"I hear the Sardook every day."

"The Sardook is white."

"The Sardook will taste very delicious."

"I do not love the Sardook."

"I want to cook the Sardook because he does not allow me to sleep." (Aren't you proud of that complex sentence?! It probably took me about 3 minutes and 17 seconds to get it from my brain to exit my mouth, though...)

So this weekend, I was standing on my balcony looking at the neighborhood boys who were making a noisy ruckus down the street when the Sardook crowed again. I was close enough to him that it dawned on me to look over that side of the balcony (onto my neighbor's roof) to actually get a peek at the Sardook. Maybe he's just roaming on the roof and I could sneak there in the night and you know, um, kick him off the roof?

Well, I peeked. Poor Sardook. He's in a cage. That's one reason he's crowing so often...he's crying out for his freedom! Cock-a-doodle-doo---let me out!

But I figured out another reason he crows all the time...all the noise of our neighborhood is disturbing his peace! He crows whenever there's a loud noise. It's like he's talking back.

Cock-a-doodle-doo--I hear you!

Cock-a-doodle-doo--Turn down that radio!

Cock-a-doodle-doo--Stop that sawing, Mr. Carpenter!

Cock-a-doodle-doo--Be quiet you footballers!

Cock-a-doodle-doo--I hear you going poo!

Cock-a-doodle-doo--I will crow when you flush too!

That's the Sardook. Letting me know he hears every time I visit the Outhouse, and crowing along with every flush.