The Power of a Good Scolding

My bff is visiting us later today. She is famous for giving marathon scoldings, full of detail and rational reasoning and quite endless. She'll pretty much bore a child into compliance. I am getting so much mileage out of this:

Child starts to misbehave.
I say, "Hmmm, shall I ask [bff] to have a little chat with you about this?"
Child straightens out immediately.

I've tried her techniques, but I am not boring enough. It's an art I aspire to.

rooster smack-down

Rooster has been posturing and posing at me through the kitchen windows.  He gets me in his sights and puffs out at me and crows in a that way he has -- you know, that "Come out here and do my bidding way", but I just ignore him and tend to my business.

Today, however, I was in the yard when he started doing this.  I was dressed for it -- chore boots, barn coat etc., so I stood my ground.  He jumped up; I deflected him.  Okay, I kicked him if you really want to know.  But he kept coming back! 

This is not good.  In the World of Rooster, whoever walks away from a fight is a big weeny and will be chased down and spurred in the back of the legs.  No matter how I puffed at him (spread my coat wide and flapped it) or kicked him, he wouldn't back off.  I couldn't walk away, nor could I persuade him to. 

What to do . . .

Oh right! My rooster was working in the barn. Oh Jamie . . . .

Three good deflections and a small and humble rooster slunk off to the far corner of the yard where he got very interested in a small blade of grass.

I just saw him through the kitchen window.  We caught each other's eyes and he humbly turned aside, no longer interested in expanding his territory to include the house-hens, as he sees us.