Cockadoo had never seen anything like it before. He was shocked, and didn't know that the rooster on the church steeple was a lifeless iron weathercock and not a real rooster at all. "Tomorrow I'll fly as high as he does," Cockadoo told the chickens. "Just let me get a good night's rest, then I'll show you. I'll tell him a thing or two, that show-off up there."
The next morning, Cockadoo got up earlier than usual and crowed louder than on other days. The chickens gazed at him in admiration. "He's going to fly," they told each other. "He's going to fly up to the top of the steeple, to that rooster up there." Cockadoo puffed up his chest, took a run up, and flew. He made an enormous effort and, flying much higher than ever before, he landed on the roof of the low barn next to the farmhouse.
He sat there panting, but was too exhausted to raise any cock-a-doodle-doos at all. I just have to make one last big effort, he thought, and then I'll fly all the way up to the top of the steeple.