Rooster may be a rogue, but fans flock

Wheezy the rooster calls Hyde Park North home. Many folks love him and even bake him treats. Others aren't so keen on the early wake-up call.

By RON MATUS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 28, 2003

It ain't easy being Wheezy.

Oh sure, the reddish-brown rooster with the happy-go-lucky disposition is showered with perks: Cracked corn. Rice Krispies treats. A banana-yellow Suzuki Savage motorcycle.

And true, he has won over many of his neighbors. One prays for him. Another whipped up a batch of "Save Wheezy" buttons at the first whiff of rumor that he might be snatched away.

But even then, Wheezy's days appear to be numbered.

The rooster showed up in Hyde Park North a few months ago, he and a hen who has since disappeared. Lonely and loud, he has been wandering the streets ever since.

Neighbors along Beach Place and Hyde Park Place are polarized: Some think Wheezy is cute, rakishly handsome, a good omen even. Others wouldn't mind if they saw him at Jimbo's Pit Bar-B-Q.

A week ago, a kid built a trap for him. Now a maintenance man hunts him with a net. Sooner or later, neighbors cranky about 3 a.m. crowing will complain to city code enforcement, which could banish him.

"I don't want to kill him (wouldn't mind if someone else did and didn't tell me about it, though)," wrote Debbie Boorman, in an e-mail to City Times. "I just want him OUT OF OUR SECTION OF HYDE PARK."

At first, Wheezy seemed so at home next to the law offices, the runaway shelter and the big old houses carved into apartments between downtown and Bayshore Boulevard.

Neighbors cheered the contrast.

"Look at the high rises," said Caroline Schwab, noting the 345 Bayshore condos and the office buildings downtown, all within view. "And then there's a rooster. It's really neat."

Nobody knows what happened to the hen. Some wonder if rogue raccoons did her in. Others suspect homeless men.

But the rooster survived. And started working his magic.

One day, Richard Wilson was taking a break by the back door of his law office when he saw spurts of dust kicking up under a palm tree across the street. He strolled over.

"And here's this bird, making a nest," he said.

Now Wilson, a self-described country boy, looks for Wheezy every day.

"I thoroughly love that little rooster," he said. "Doggone, I thought everybody loved him."

Many do.

The patients at Hyde Park Counseling Center feed him bird seed. They named him Wheezy, after Louise, one of their counselors.

Schwab is the one who spoils him on fresh-baked pans of Rice Krispies and marshmallows. She watches him cozy up to alley cats.

"He grooms them," Schwab said. "It's like he's doing flea control. I swear to God."

Not everyone is so tickled.

Many mornings, Wheezy perches on that chrome-trimmed Suzuki Savage, face forward, like he's steering the thing, Schwab said.

Wheezy Rider is fantasizing, no doubt, about the promise of the open road, the wind whipping through his comb, the wings of his lost love wrapped tight around his waist.

In moments like this, he can't help but crow . . . and crow, and crow, and crow.

And Boorman can't help but groan.

Her bedroom window is 10 feet away.

She e-mailed City Times two weeks ago after reading an article, published last summer, about a small flock of cherished chickens in another South Tampa neighborhood.

"I wonder if some of those enchanted neighbors of North Bon Air might like to come have a go at catching (Wheezy)," Boorman wrote. "I can assure them where he'll be EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY MORNING between 5:30 and 6:30."

"Trust me. The circles under my eyes don't lie."

Boorman complained to her landlord, Ellen Zusman at Zee Management. Now Zusman is trying to find a government agency or animal welfare group to take the bird. Moving Wheezy would be in his best interest, she said.

Construction will begin soon on the massive One Bayshore condo complex, meaning big, chicken-squashing trucks everywhere, she said.

"What if he gets on Bayshore?" Zusman said. "He's a goner."

Residents of The Bayshore apartments have complained about Wheezy, too. Management responded by buying a net for the maintenance supervisor but, so far, the bird has proved too elusive.

Carol Raley said one of her neighbors, normally a nice guy, was so fed up with Wheezy's crowing that he asked to borrow the darts from her dart board.

He was joking. Sort of.

Raley doesn't mind the crowing. But Wheezy, who can still fly short distances, often perches on a limb above her red Honda Civic, splattering it with chalky white splotches.

"He's a pain," she said.

Raley's daughter Brooke built the trap, using a stick, a string and a cardboard box. It didn't work. But if it had, Wheezy would be strutting on a chicken farm in Brooksville right now.

Brooke is glad he isn't. When neighborhood mut Schatzi bugs her, the rooster waddles to the rescue.

"The dogs are afraid of him," Brooke boasted.

The city has no record of complaints about a rooster in Hyde Park.

But if complaints are lodged and found to be valid, the city will hire a contractor to get him, said Bill Dougherty, the city code enforcement manager. Whether Wheezy would be killed or exiled depends on the contractor, he said.

Pro-Wheezy forces are mobilizing to save him.

Told last week that some residents were going to snitch on the bird, Bill Hogan immediately made 30 "Save Wheezy" buttons. He passed them out to staff and students at the Haven W. Poe Runaway Center, where he's the program manager.

The rooster is "obviously thriving," Hogan said. "Leave him alone."

Across the street, Wheezy crowed in agreement, again and again and again.

-- Ron Matus can be reached at 226-3405 or matus@sptimes.com .

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