My Run with the Rooster

Three days out of the week I babysit for my mom's childhood best friend's kids. It's a pretty simple job, and nothing super stressful because I've know these kids their whole lives. But one particular day a few weeks ago, I had a traumatic experience when watching them. This family has quite the array of animals including a dog, 2 cats, a hermit crab, a lizard named Sheldon, and a demonic rooster named George.
From my first day I had the idea of what kind of monster George was. He was your basic rooster out of a horror movie. He would perch himself on a bench or chair or wherever he could get himself a good view inside the house. And for hours he would stare at us with those beady little eyes, barely moving unless disturbed by something else.
On one of my first days watching the kids, they wanted to go outside and jump on their trampoline. The moment I stepped outside, Tommy (the youngest at 11 years old) casually told me to grab the bamboo stick. Clearly this was foreign to me and Katie (the oldest at 12 years old) took it upon herself to go into the garage quickly and grab a bamboo stick appearing to be 7 feet in length. Confused, I asked the kids what this was for and they told me that it was in case George got a little rowdy. I replied with a nod understanding the implication. I was also informed that George was the only one of their chickens left because the fox had killed the other chickens, but evidently George had the chicken-power to whoop some fox ass and that fox don't come 'round no mo'. He also had the chicken-power to whoop some human ass. Therefore, bamboo stick. That day we only stayed on the trampoline for about 10 minutes, mostly because of the heat but also because George was getting within an unsafely close proximity. At one point Tommy even ran at George with the bamboo stick. I ran pretty fast when he started getting close, but we all remained safe.
A few weeks later, Tommy and I decided to risk everything and go outside. There's a large field next to their house with lots of berries ready to pick, so we decided it was worth it. We always kept our guards on in case we saw George. After nearly 20 minutes of safe picking we thought we were in the clear. Tommy and I were just finishing up when I heard him yell "RUN!!!!". Now he was right next to me so I was a little confused why he was yelling and also was very into my berry picking because I had just found a nice patch of juicy ones. After a few seconds it finally registered with me and I turned to see George poking his head around the corner of the bushes. Not only was this a terrifying scene, it was plain messed up that these kids were this afraid of this rooster. I repeatedly told Tommy that it was okay and that he would live to tell this story, while at the same time telling myself the same exact thing. I strategically ran around George and he didn't seem bothered by that at all and continued to mind his own business. I yelled over to Tommy who was about 75 feet away from me and told him to do the exact same thing that I just did but he told me that he was going to run around the long way to get away from George and that I should distract him so it was clear when he got back. So, doing my best impression of a female chicken that he may want to fertilize some eggs with, I tried to distract a rooster. George really seemed to be getting nothing out of this so I stopped and decided to wait for Tommy to get back because George actually seemed pretty harmless at this point. During that time I found a tick on my leg and was picking it off my leg when I heard the pitter patter of small legs hitting the grass. I looked up only to see George accepting the devil inside of him and full on charging right at me. I booked it out of there, completely forgetting Tommy in the process. George moved fast and was gaining on me, which is a little embarrassing really. Luckily the house wasn't far, but by the time I reached the front door George was already on the porch step about 4 feet from me, and I quickly slammed the door in his stupid little beak. Breathing heavy with my back against the door, Katie quickly asked me what happened and my only reply was that a rooster almost killed me. She asked me where Tommy was and I told her to hope for a new baby brother because he was probably already dead. She went outside then to find Tommy and a decent amount of time later they returned safely.
Now maybe you're wondering why earlier I referred to George in the past tense. That's because after this incident George never saw the light of day again. He is now constantly locked in his pen and I like to think it's because of our little marathon, but it's really because George was digging up flowerbeds while stalking his owners.
Deep down inside, I know George is probably just angry because he lost his chicken girlfriends and that must really suck for him because he was basically the Hugh Hefner of the coop. But he doesn't need to be so salty about it, because chances are if he wasn't on coop arrest he would've got that fox.
"A little bit of chicken fried..."-Zac Brown Band, "Chicken Fried"