Grey nomads pulling up at remote roadhouses are used to finding something a little bit different, but even veterans of the road are a bit taken aback when they meet ‘Cluck’ Norris, the rooster who thinks he’s a kangaroo.
The management team at the Erldunda Roadhouse, about 200 kilometres south of Alice Springs, say travellers are unfailingly gobsmacked when they see Cluck strutting his stuff with his more bouncy friends.
“They come up and see Cluck and it gives them a good laugh,” Kira Boswell, the roadhouse’s site manager, told the ABC. “They think it’s hilarious that he eats with the roos … he almost looks like he’s chatting with them.”
The rooster was brought to the roadhouse by a traveller who found him under a bridge a couple of months ago and didn’t know who he belonged to. He was put with the roadhouse kangaroos, and now he thinks he is one of them.
Another of the roadhouse team, Cain Powell, says he has seen roosters impersonate animals before, but not like this.
“Never a kangaroo. A dog, a cat, but never a kangaroo. This is the first one I’ve seen, and he’s doing a pretty good job of it too,” he said. “He’s exactly the same, like the other ‘roos. They will come up and always want to get a pat off me, and he will want to come up and get a pat off me.”
Mr Powell who gave Cluck his name said the unlikely animal friends were all getting along.
“Cluck is the lowest in the pecking order of course, but they do all right with him,” he told the ABC. “He’s got a very good temperament for a rooster.”
* What is most unusual roadhouse experience you have had? Comment below.
