Bawking Bad
Los Gallos Locos are some real bad hombres.
Donny runs an egg farm. Or at least, he calls it a farm. It’s really just a cluster of half-collapsed sheds, some welded chicken wire, and a sign that says “Eggcellence in Every Shell” duct-taped to a wheelbarrow. That’s life out here in the unincorporated fringe, where zoning laws go to die and nobody asks what’s in the brisket.
When bird flu rolled through like a biblical curse and wiped out half the national flock, Donny went south of the border for reinforcements—cheap hens, no paperwork, plenty of cluck. What he didn’t count on were the roosters.
No one’s exactly sure how they got here. Rumors say they hitched rides in the undercarriage of the delivery truck, or maybe tunneled up through the septic system. Either way, they weren’t ordinary birds. These were radicalized. Macho. Mean. Roosters with a cause.
They call themselves Los Gallos Locos, and they’re hellbent on disrupting Donny’s fragile little egg empire.
Donny’s eggs are supposed to be 100% American whites, a branding choice that sounds increasingly awkward the more you explain it. But when Los Gallos Locos get into the coop, hens start laying brown eggs—proud, defiant eggs with cultural flavor and better cholesterol. Donny’s granny, who watches Fox News on mute while blasting polka music, insists brown eggs “just don’t taste American.”
Desperate to stop the rooster insurgency, Donny hires a guy off Craigslist. His name’s Styx. No last name. Just Styx. He shows up with a paintball mask and a butterfly knife and says, “Let’s talk poultry.”
Donny gives him a quota: three roosters a day. Simple.
But catching these roosters? Not so simple. They operate in cells. They’ve got lookouts. One of them wears a GoPro and live-streams raids on Donny’s feed buckets. Styx is outmatched, outgunned, and frankly, out of shape. So he improvises.
Instead of hunting rogue roosters, he just grabs a few hens from the coop, cracks their necks, and dumps them on the scale. Donny goes by weight, and Granny can’t tell a rooster from a rotary phone.
Meanwhile, Styx has a side hustle.
Down the road, just past the burned-out Dairy Queen sign, sits El Pollo Gratis, the most popular taco truck in the tri-county area. It doesn’t technically have a permit, but it does have a line around the block and five stars on Yelp.
Styx sells them the day’s “catch” for $5 a bird, no questions asked. “Free-range, locally sourced, culturally appropriate,” he tells them. They don’t check. They just butcher the meat, fire up the grill, and hand him a plate of whatever he wants. Styx hasn’t bought a meal in weeks.
Back at the farm, Donny’s spreadsheet looks great. Egg production’s “back on track.” Granny’s reassured. She hums “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and waves her egg beater like a baton.
But the truth? Hens are disappearing. Brown eggs are rising. The rooster gang is growing stronger. One of them even tagged Donny’s mailbox with the phrase “HUEVOS LIBRES” in chicken scratch.
And Styx?
He just put a down payment on a new ATV.