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The sport is under severe attack, Ratliff says gravely. The Humane Society won’t stop until it is completely eradicated from the United States. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, once the friend of
cockfighters, is now doing everything he can to outlaw it in his state, one of only two states where it is
still legal.
There was a time you could fight cocks all over, Ratliff says. He fought them in Arizona, Oklahoma and
pretty much every state in the South. Fought them in Texas, too, before it became a felony. He points
to the long bank of trophies taking up an entire wall. “I’ve got 97 of them trophies,” Ratliff says. “I just
need three more to get 100. One of my students will get them for me.”
Hurst smiles at his old friend. As they begin to hold forth on the sorry state of the United States of
America, particularly its stance on cockfighting, I look around. It’s more shrine than living room. Above
the mammoth big screen: an oil painting of two cocks fighting. On the TV: the golden bust of a rooster.
Next to the TV, nailed to the wall: a toilet seat with a rooster painted on it. Every piece of art, every
throw blanket, every knickknack on every shelf is a tribute to cockfighting. Over in one corner of the
room I notice a collection of Native American art. A small concession, I guess, to Ratliff’s wife.
“People have no damn common sense,” Ratliff says, sipping his root beer. “This thing is an industry,
this cockfighting is, and it’s a way of life. You see the Humane Society is so damn ignorant they don’t
know anything about common sense. This has been handed down since the beginning of the world.
Since 5,000 years before Christ.”
“People think these roosters, that we make them fight,” Hurst says with a frown.
“They’re born that way,” Ratliff says. “It’s inherited from their ancestors like we inherited it from our
ancestors.”
Hurst asks me what sort of story I’m interested in writing. They’ve read plenty sympathetic to that
damn Humane Society. The way Ratliff sees it, city folks are all mixed up. They shudder at the thought
of a racehorse busting a leg, or even a damn squirrel dropping from a tree. Don’t they know how beef
cattle are slaughtered? A bolt to the head. Chickens are strung up by their hind legs and beheaded.
Nothing humane about that.
I explain that I’ve heard a lot of bad things about cockfighting, and that I’ve come to hear the other
side. Hurst nods, not quite convinced.
“We have nothing to hide,” Ratliff says, shrugging his shoulders, like a plea to his old friend. He pops a
throat lozenge in his mouth. He’s got a lot to say.
Mike Ratliff first discovered cockfighting in Cross Cut, Texas, when he was five years old. “My mother
gave me a set of gamecock eggs, and I learned to count by counting them baby chicken eggs. One
morning I went out and they had hatched. They was in a little pile, and their heads were real bloody.
They had just been pecking each other, fighting, you know? And I was just fascinated by them. I
wanted to know what it was that made them fight.”
(To be continued next issue)
Thanks for sharing Roosterman.
Roosterman N0. 37