Last month R and I moved to what you might call suburbia.

I wouldn’t call it that because I am a city snob. I said things like, “I don’t know…it just looks too much like a family would live here…” as we searched for our first home.

But it turns out our perfect first house was on a quiet street, in a quiet enclave of Los Angeles, and previously owned by a family of four. I wasn’t about to bite off my nose to spite my ability to smell my potential new rose garden. But I also wasn’t about to call my new neighborhood the ‘burbs. “We’re moving to Eagle Rock!” I said, “It’s still part of LA. Just a little less urban!” Or in other words, sub.

And then, on our first morning in our new, slightly under urban neighborhood, I heard a very un city-like noise. Not the sound of children riding their bikes or neighbors clacking on their front porches. A rooster. I heard a rooster cock-a-doodle-do (I looked it up. That is the proper terminology) at 5:15 in the morning.

For a moment I felt vindicated. See! We don’t live in the suburbs! I wanted to call out to R. We live in the country! But I didn’t do that because it was 5:15 in the morning and I do not speak before 7, 8 on the weekends.

So I drifted back off to sleep. The rooster’s call was faint. He sounded far up in the hills that surround our house. No harm, no fowl 😉

Four days later he was right outside my house. Cock-a-doodle-doing, which I assure you is more adorable in name than in sound. This time it was 4:45 in the morning.

And so the saga of Arturo the Urban Adjacent Rooster began. How do I know his name is Arturo? Because my new neighbor named him that in a town-wide posting she made on the NextDoor app.

That posting and my sleep schedule next time.