The Traffic Puts Them In A Fowl Mood

Traffic is so bad on Staten Island that motorists use cemeteries as short cuts, leaving a trail of blood in their wake:

Sunrise at Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp is usually announced by the crowing of Rodney the rooster, who is ever accompanied by his companion, Henrietta the hen.

But yesterday, for the first time in years, dawn was missing its “cock-a-doodle-doo” after a speeding car struck and killed Rodney Friday afternoon, leaving Henrietta and Moravian staffers forlorn.

“People treat Moravian Cemetery like it’s Hylan Boulevard,” said Richard L. Simpson, the cemetery’s historian. “Accidents happen, but if you go slow, birds move. You know they were speeding, the way Rodney was splayed on the ground, with feathers everywhere.”

This is the third bird killed by drivers in the cemetery this summer, Simpson said. The cemetery’s two freshwater lakes draw many migrating birds, including ducks, egrets and Canada geese, he added. Earlier this year, a favorite cemetery goose, Squiggles, also was killed by a car.

. . .

Around 2 p.m. on Friday, when the feathered pair would normally be pecking on the office window, ready for their lunch, a worker found Rodney dead in the road.

Cemetery workers stayed late after work to give Rodney a proper burial in a shady spot behind the office building, overlooking the lake. Henrietta was nowhere to be found. But later, when staffers went to pay their respects, they found her standing over her friend’s grave. She laid an egg there, which staffers placed on the cross-post of Rodney’s grave.

“She had to know he was there. They were so close,” Simpson said.

Moravian has posted numerous stop signs and speed-limit signs, as well as adding speed bumps to discourage lead-footed drivers who cut across the cemetery from Richmond Road to Todt Hill Road, but to no avail.

Two fire hydrants and many signs have been knocked down by speeders, Simpson says, adding that road rage and aggressive drivers on nearby Hylan Boulevard probably don’t help matters.

“Most people are very respectful here, but every now and then, you get somebody in a hurry, like in any other place,” said Rev. Duane Ullrich, from nearby New Dorp Moravian Church, noting that the birds are fed in front of the office building, in the area of the cemetery with the highest traffic.