O Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go.

What's in the pot, whatever she caught, it's best that we don't know.

Listen to spooked. Stay tuned.

Wow. Okay, so after the sound of the call to prayer fades, outside a tiny village, I'm walking down this path.

To either side is jungle.

Critters bark overhead, it's hot, It's lush. I do not know this place.

Rural Indonesia. It's just me by myself. Though, as he a kid, maybe 11 or 12, he's grinning. He says, he says something. Then he starts walking into the jungle. Motion's me to follow him.

Trail behind a strange boy in the woods. I tripped after him over stumps of branches. What? I'm about to turn back. When I hear voices, music,

we turn left, right. And now I understand where all the village menfolk went.

Cut out of the foliage emerges a whole secret world.

Dudes squatting around circles, pressing fistfuls of cash from one person's hand to the next,

smoking, eating, laughing, all of them framed by rows and rows of wicker cages.

Inside each cage, beautiful, multicolored roosters stare back out, occasionally tipping their heads back to scream.

These are our gladiators. They will fight to the death in the middle of that circle.

And the boy, he's talking to me again, he's pointing, saying that I should pick one of the birds?

No, no, he's saying, I should pick this bird, his bird.

I'm guessing one he raised.

And a man, maybe his father nods behind him.

I kneel down to peer inside the cage at the most glorious animal I've ever seen.

Proud, his plumage and explosion of black, red, green, his feathers burn, translucent,

blinks back at me, eyes, brilliant, alien, fierce.

A winner.

...