PC and Rooster Update
Well, my PC is about set up again. One thing that I've found out is this -- CD-Rs can be pretty darned unreliable. I'm glad I had certain things also backed up on zip disks.
The rooster is gone for now. Animal control was closed yesterday (of course). (I was off work yesterday, too.) I called this morning and they said that they couldn't send anyone out with a trap until next week because of the holiday this week (uh, guys, the holiday is over...whatever). They said I could pick a trap up from the animal shelter if I wanted. I asked them if they would come get the rooster if I could trap him myself in a pet carrier, and they said yes.
Well, to make a long story short, he was scared of the pet carrier and would not get in it, not even with oats leading up to it and inside it. So then I tried to catch him with a blanket. He got very upset and stalked off across my neighbor's yard and then out of sight. He was cursing me the whole way in chicken-talk. So, it's not my problem any more. If he comes back, I'll just wait until animal control can bring me a trap. I took a long lunch today to try and deal with this problem and I'm not taking any more time off because of that rooster.
BTW, my neighbors knew he was there and had put seed out for him. (I had put stuff out for him as well -- he really liked oats). They were as clueless as I was about what to do.
Your rooster problem was nothing compared to what I had to put up with a long time ago. We had squirrels in our attic. We trapped them and hauled them out to the country, and had a hole in our attic fixed. Then about two days later, there's a bird in our basement! Got trapped in the attic when the hole was patched, then flew down the heater chimney thing, and was flying around in our basement, creating all kinds of havoc with our finished ceiling down there. And of course, when the front door to the outside was opened, our big General Cat was all too happy to show him to the door, though he probably had a different motive than driving the bird to safety outdoors.