Black and grey tattoo of a cartoon rooster playing a guitar, with a ball and chain on one leg, on the side of the ribs.

Rooster guitarist with ball and chain on ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A cartoon rooster stands on one leg, playing a guitar, while a ball and chain is fastened to its other ankle. The design uses bold dark outlines with grey shading on the feathers, body and instrument. The rooster is centred on the side of the ribs, with the chain trailing towards the waistband.

Traditional Ribs Rooster Guitar Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Cockerel Ned had been playing the same four chords to the gulls since the tide turned, and the gulls had started to heckle. He stood on his one good leg on the harbour wall at Saltmarrow, guitar cradled under a wing, the iron ball at his other ankle clanking against the stones every time he leaned into a bend. The chain ran back along the quay to the bollard where the magistrate had tied him for stealing the mayor's breakfast eggs. Fair enough, he thought. Eggs were eggs.

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Nobody in Saltmarrow paid a rooster to sing. They paid for fish, for rope, for the rum the fishermen drank on Thursdays. So Ned bent his neck, shut his beak, and tried a slow number about a fisherman's widow who never got her husband's boots back. The ball bounced. A passing bosun laughed so hard he dropped a crate of mackerel across the cobbles.

On the seventh day of rain, Ned noticed the chain had worn thin where it met the bollard. He picked out a low, grinding tune, the kind of melody that shakes loose rivets, and the iron answered with a hum. By dusk the links had gone soft as tin, and the ball slid free into the harbour with a plop that startled a seal off the steps.

Ned hopped to the end of the mole, hung the guitar over his back, and tapped out one last riff with his claw. Then he flapped off over the lighthouse, the ball trailing a dark line of rust down the slipway. Behind him the mayor's breakfast sat on its plate, cold and untouched, which was the one thing he had never meant to take.