Roosters are vain enough to imagine that the comb sitting atop their own heads is certainly as cocky as any comb anywhere—and probably more so.
This odd growth riding atop gallinaceous birds (like chickens and turkeys and pheasants)—red, fleshy, crinkled and folded as…well, it can bring certain female intricacies to mind—is, I imagine a subject of roosterly pride (“my comb is more redder, fleshier, more crinkled and more subtly folded than your comb is!”).
Which might account for the irritable look on this rooster’s face (is “face” correct here?) when the hitherto haughty bird is suddenly presented (as if it were on display in a store window) with an impossibly, improbably rich comb, way more rococo than the rather tawdry one the bird is presently sporting.
Note: The cock’s comb is under no circumstances to be confused with a coxcomb—a foppish dude, a dandy or a professional jester with his red, be-ribboned jester’s hat.
