Saved by a Rooster

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

~Lao Tzu

We were living in a war zone in France. Our Alsatian farm on the outskirts of a village near Strasbourg was considered so dangerous that we were relocated to a distant outlying region that was somewhat safer. We were unfamiliar with this town, so we had to figure out what was what and where to hide in case of an attack.

I was just a girl during World War II, trying to help my mother take care of my four siblings and my grandparents while my father was serving as a French soldier. We seemed to always be worried about where our next meal was coming from and how to duck the next terrifying onslaught of bombs.

I had been doing plenty of dreaming and having lots of nightmares, and scary images of roosters featured prominently. Our precious egg-laying chickens and their rooster mates had recently been stolen from our farm, probably by people even hungrier than we were. Perhaps that’s where the dreams were coming from. It felt like the rooster dreams were trying to warn me about something. But during the petrifying war, everyone I knew reported having some sort of weird or awful dream. So, I tried to put them out of my mind.

The rooster is the unofficial National Animal of France, used to symbolize vigilance. In the 9th century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that all churches must display the rooster on their steeples as a symbol. The ruling was forgotten as centuries passed, but roosters remain on Protestant church steeples in France, distinguishing themselves from Catholic churches that exhibit a cross.

As I was exploring the new town where we had been placed, the air-raid sirens started wailing, sending adrenaline coursing through my system. I needed to run. But where? I saw a solid-looking church in the distance, but as I scampered toward it, I noticed the ominous-looking rooster on its steeple. Screeching to a halt as I remembered my dreams, I dove into a culvert without thinking and crawled into the sewer to take cover.

Bombs rained down on the village, trilling loudly as they fell. As if getting bombed wasn’t scary enough, engineers designed whistles to be attached to the bombs, making them even more frightening as they noisily whistled their way to earth. Explosions occurred everywhere, spraying dirt and debris wherever they hit. Finally, things subsided enough that we could hear the engines of the bombers fading in the distance. Peeking out from my hiding spot, I peered through the floating dust to check out the damage in the area. The church that I had been running to for safety had been hit, its ceiling and front wall disintegrated. I could have been injured, or worse, had I made it inside to hide.

The war ended soon afterward, and we returned home to find our farmhouse and outbuildings totally destroyed. But I was very much alive and couldn’t wait to roll up my sleeves to start rebuilding it all. The first thing I replaced was the family rooster. Those dreams about roosters had saved me and given me the chance to start over again and live my life to the fullest.

— Denise Del Bianco —