Cock of the Walk

Partway through the Casera Reunion, a couple of my cousins wanted us to join them at a cockfight. Yeah, cockfighting is right up there with basketball here. So we excused ourselves from the reunion, which was just getting into high gear, it seemed. We passed another cousin bringing another karaoke machine.

Cockfighting is not permitted in Ilag although every house seems to have at least 1 or 2 roosters, so we had to travel over to another barangay where cockfighting is legal.

 We stopped at the house to retrieve one manok (rooster).  

And then we retrieved the other manok from my cousin's house down the road.

We were smiling in this picture thinking how absurd it was that we left a perfectly good family reunion to go to a cockfight.

We were talking about how much my husband would have enjoyed this adventure.

The van ride with the guys was the polar opposite of rides with the girls. With the girls, there was always incessant talking - tsismis - no quiet spaces. With the guys, it was seriously quiet. Nervously quiet.

Quiet like Is this where we learn about our new lives? quiet. Like Where's our mom to tell us what's going on and to watch out for us? Like we don't even know our cousins and can't communicate with them and What were we thinking? getting into a van with them.

Coming into the arena reminded me of the Farmer's Market, only once we got into the venue, there were no vendors selling veggies or wares, just areas for roosters to prep for their possible last acts.

That bag looked a lot like the bags that held our wonderful lunches during the Island Hopping excursion, no?

No rooster in there (AFAIK!)

As for the venue, the arena was surrounded by plexiglass. I noted that the only women there aside from the 2 serving beer and snacks were me and my sister. It was loud with lots of men greeting each other and out of the crowd we heard a man call for my BIL "Gabe!" A friend of my cousin Robert... or maybe a cousin. IDK. This was becoming a thing, running into Gabe's new friends.

Each match was short lived. The handlers would come out with their roosters, try to antagonize them with each other by putting them into each other's faces, then they would tie "swords" (razors) onto one of each of their legs. When it was their turn to fight, the protective covers came on the knives and the roosters were left to fight each other. In most cases, the fight was over with very quickly with one of the roosters spurring a fatal cut. In one of the fights, both roosters died and in one of the matches, the roosters were not the least bit interested in fighting, they pecked at the ground.

During the fight when things weren't as animated as they should be, the emcee/ref guy would pick up both contestants to see if they still wanted to fight. He also did the final count for the loser.

Before the fight

After each match, someone would come out and sweep up any feathers. Someone else would tally the score on the plexiglass. One cousin's rooster won and the other one's lost. The losers were processed on site so that the "defeated hen" could be taken home and eaten.

Post Processing

Cockfighting was not on the original agenda but we were open. And while it is a sport, the defeated bird is then eaten - Filipinos are uber resourceful - so it wasn't the most horrible thing ever. Not sure I'd need to attend another cockfight ever, but, ya never know.