We are more popular than we thought

We were in the doctor's office last week when suddenly the youngest pointed out a picture on the wall....

The Completely Unexpected

Wednesday afternoon I saw an email from someone asking me to call them.  I had no idea who they were, but I called anyway.  A woman asked me about the original Nokesville rooster and about how it was painted.  She tells me that an animal control officer saw it in the next county over, behind someone's house.

After a few phone calls, two visits from the police to my house, and the deputy going back to the house it was seen at, I received a phone call telling me that my rooster was in their custody!

A few weeks after he was stolen, I had given up hope and figured I would never see it again.  The next day, the deputy brought the rooster back, in his animal control truck!  It was only fitting that he was bringing me a rooster. :)

I was a little too excited to have my rooster back.

Nokesville Road Roosters' Makeover

It was time for the Roosters to have a make over.  We are hoping to paint them once a month to change with the seasons and holidays, but first we have to reward the people who helped to replace them by letting them do the dirty work to paint a rooster.  :)

This time it was a woman who commutes over an hour to work each day and drives past the roosters.  She was very supportive of them being replaced and is just a friendly person that we now know.  She came by for her turn to paint and was going with an 80's rock band theme with bright colors and big hair.

The oldest and I decided to celebrate football season starting.

We couldn't figure out how to give it big hair, but then we saw some garland that was still on the mailbox post from last winter (whoops) and added that and an earring to the bird.

 

Those nutty roosters are at it again.

We've already planned out Octobers' themes and have a few people coming to help paint them.

The Nokesville Road Rooster has a Facebook Page

With all of the publicity that the rooster has been receiving, and the things that the boys put together last night, I decided that the Nokesville Road Rooster needed a Facebook page.

Yesterday, the boys created a fundraising page online to raise money to replace the rooster, and get him a friend.  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/replace-the-nokesville-rd-rooster

I had also decided to do some online yard sale stuff to raise some money and offered to babysit and tutor as well.

It was then that I decided to create a page for the rooster (click the image to go the page).

I figured this would be the best way to share updates about our efforts to replace him but then I also thought it would be a ridiculous (ridiculously funny!) way share how the rooster changes once we replace him.  I thought we could post pictures of him each time that he is painted and if we are ever feeling creative enough, we could post a random status update.

This morning, I finally agreed to let the youngest do a lemonade stand.  He has been asking me, and I kept saying no, but I finally gave in.  Tomorrow I will let him squeeze lemons and make lemonade and then in the afternoon I will let him and the older son set up a stand on the road to sell lemonade and raise some money.  I even said that maybe I would bake some goodies for them to sell.

I also decided that since so many people in the community have shared their enjoyment of seeing the rooster changing for the seasons, some people that donate will get to come paint him however they would like to.  :)  So far two people are on that list!

Then, I received an email from the Bristow Beat, the online local newspaper, asking for information about the fundraising.  I'm not sure how he knew we were trying to raise funds, but I told him what we were doing.

I can't believe a silly rooster that we put by our mailbox as a sort of joke has turned into something so big.  I am in awe at how supportive the community is and how much they enjoyed seeing him.

The case of the missing rooster

Yesterday afternoon we had a knock on our door.  Someone had seen the huge sign we put up at the mailbox stating that the rooster statue was stolen and we were offering a reward for it.  She said that she saw a rooster in front of a house over the weekend in the next county over.  She told me she'd never seen it before and when she saw our sign just then, she'd made a u-turn to come back and tell me.  

She gave me directions on how to get to it and we got in the car and off we went.  I kept telling the boys it wasn't going to be our rooster.  I didn't think anyone would be dumb enough to put the rooster out in front of their house, less than half an hour away.

Not our rooster

Sure enough, it wasn't our rooster.

We came home.

Today I got a message from someone on Facebook saying her friend saw a rooster that had to have been ours.  I replied and told her that the one on "Green Road" isn't ours, and she told me that was the one that she had seen.

I'm thankful that people are looking for it and noticing things and trying to help.  I just with the thieves had it somewhere to be spotted.  I believe that whoever took the rooster have it tucked back in the woods on their own property, perhaps as a funny target for shooting at, and it will never be seen again.

And that got me thinking about the path our rooster has taken with us.

Awhile back, a good friend of mine shared this blog post with me from The Bloggess.  I laughed out loud.  Several times.  I just knew that when I purchased my house, I had to get a rooster too.  A few months later when I finally did buy my house, I started looking for my own rooster, and that good friend was also trying to find me one too.

Finally, after searching for about six months, I found my own rooster.

When we got him home, I bought spray paint to repaint him just so the colors would stand out a little more, and then we propped him up by the mailbox and chained him down so no one would take him.

Sure enough, a few months later we found him laying on the ground.  Someone had moved the boulders and tried to take him but stopped when they saw he was chained down.

For Christmas I thought it would be funny to start painting him for the different holidays.  We started with red and green.

 And then we added a strand of Christmas lights.

I had been hoping to paint it red, white, and pink with hearts for Valentine's Day but didn't have the paint or the time.

For Easter I knew we would do an Easter Egg, but the vision in my mind was much better than what my artistic abilities could create.

And then for the summer we painted him red, white, and blue and I even got smart and created a stencil to put some stars on him.

The plan was to paint him orange like a pumpkin at the start of October and I hadn't decided how to paint him between now and then.  He was stolen before I came up with any ideas.

Now that I've seen how the community liked him and liked watching him change, I'm determined to replace him and paint him more often.  It still won't look great as painting a metal rooster with spray paint isn't easy to do, but now that I've gotten smarter and I can make stencils, I think I can come up with some ideas.

This post was shared on Thursdays @ the Homestead Blog Hop

Stolen Rooster

Saturday night someone(s) stole our rooster.  :(  

We didn't leave the house from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, so we didn't notice it missing until Monday morning.  The rooster had been chained to the mailbox post to prevent anyone from taking it, but the thieves ripped the mailbox out of the ground and took the rooster.

I posted on several community groups in the area and heard a lot of supportive posts, but even more than that, people were commenting on how much they liked seeing the rooster.  I didn't realize what a following we'd created with that rooster.

And then the community news paper ran a piece about it.  If I had known they were going to quote me when I sent them the quick email, I would have picked better words.  :)

http://bristowbeat.com/news/072913-bristow-woman-seeks-return-of-stolen-rooster-sculpture/

I filed a police report but wasn't given much hope.  

I'm thinking that some teenage or early-20s kids were out Saturday night and thought it would be funny to take it.  I can only hope that somehow someone who has seen this show up in their yard will see one of the community posts or the article online and will get it back to me, but I'm really not thinking I will ever see it again.

Sigh.  We're disappointed and surprised.  We knew someone would try to take it, it happen once about 18 months ago and when the thieves realized it was chained down, they just threw it in the ditch and left.  I never would have thought someone would go so far as to pull out the mailbox post.

If we replace it, which I'm sure we will do at some point when I have the money to buy a new one, I'm just not sure how to secure it since a chain didn't help.