CAMDEN — A rooster that insisted on strutting his stuff for several mornings close to downtown Camden has been evicted, although the friends he made while at the head of the harbor are now lifelong.

“All I ask that you do is to continue to call him Chester,” said Maryanne Shanahan, owner of the Hawthorn Inn on High Street. She and her husband, Bill Amidon, took the stray rooster in over the weekend, and by Monday evening they had called in the chicken experts, Bob and Pettina Harden, to help relocate the well-feathered fowl to Appleton.

Over the course of the long weekend that began Thursday night, the rooster had attended a wedding reception, been taunted by teenagers in a public parking lot, crossed the street (Route 1) twice, nearly tussled with a tough cat, escaped a temporary corral and successfully annoyed the neighborhood at 5:35 a.m. four days in a row.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” said nearby innkeeper David Dickey, who owns Camden Riverhouse on Tannery Lane, just a little way down the road. “I was dreaming and figured the crowing was part of the dream.”

The mystery remains: Where did Chester come from, and where will he eventually find a permanent home. Because he needs one.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” asked Shanahan, as the rooster pranced and preened for the camera, moving into the evening sunlight that filtered into the Hawthorn Inn’s backyard. Shanahan believes him to be a Bhanta, a conclusion reached after she and Bill conducted online research. “He is absolutely so beautiful.”

Harden thinks he might be more of a hybrid, but they all agree he is a smart, resourceful and handsome creature.

“I started hearing him during the day on Friday, a rooster crowing in middle morning, in the yard” she said. “Bill called Camden police and they came in late afternoon, but he had hidden himself.”

“I can’t believe we walked right by him,” said Amidon.

As it turned out, this hiding was part of the rooster’s evening routine, as the innkeepers became more acquainted with Chester. In a few short days, the rooster had established a pattern: He bedded down in the dark patch of woods on the other side of a tall, chain-linked fence that separates the inn’s yard with the public parking lot on Atlantic Avenue, at the head of Camden Harbor. If the gate at the parking lot path was not open to Shanahan’s yard, the rooster would fly up and over the fence.

At first light, he would crow, and doing so, he quickly wore out his Camden welcome.

By Sunday morning, he was so comfortable at his new home, he crowed at his now regular 5:35 time.

“Making noise,” said Amidon. “Three crows in a row, then quiet for about eight minutes. It sounds like he has a sore throat.”

Amidon climbed out of bed and went down to see about the fuss.

“When Bill got down there, he was standing at the gate waiting to get into our yard,” said Shanahan. “Chester scolded Bill, and came in to be fed. The neighbors also started making noise about getting woken. The guests, however, have not minded. They thought it was part of the Camden B&B experience.”

(Camden town ordinance stipulates that roosters may be kept in residential areas, but the property must be more than 2.5 acres in size)

The rooster’s true weekend began, like for so many others, on Friday afternoon. Shanahan first got protective when she heard several carloads of teenagers taunting the chicken in the parking lot. She went over and caught a few throwing stones and jeering at the rooster. That’s when the name Chester lit up in her mind. She called to him.

“He’s yours?” the teens said.

“Come on, Chester,” said Shanahan. “He even walked toward me for a few steps.”

She threw down some Rice Chex and he followed her into her yard. More cereal followed that night. On Saturday morning, Chester was on the side of the fence, in his bed spot. But not for long: sometime during the day, as crews were setting up a tent in the inn’s backyard for the wedding reception, the rooster wandered across the road to Abigail’s Inn, where, after breakfast, a guest there knocked on innkeeper Kipp Wright’s door, and said: “It looks like your cat is getting into a fight with a rooster.”

The Wrights and neighbors corralled the chicken into a makeshift cage, and Wright posted the rooster’s photo on Facebook and the Midcoast Barter page. He also called Camden police, but was informed that chickens were out of that department’s purview.

“Meanwhile, Chester found a weak corner and escaped,” said Wright.

“It was 4:30 p.m., his usual time to come back to the yard,” said Shanahan, now an old hand at chicken behavior.

“So, he attended the wedding,” she said. “And at 8 p.m., he was ready to sleep so he jumped the fence to his spot. And there were all the wedding jokes about the cock in the woods.”

Sunday was a day of rest, and he stayed in the yard all day, eating wild bird seed. On Monday morning, Amidon went to Rankin’s to get cracked corn.

“He is resourceful and discerning,” said Amidon. “He did not like table scraps.”

Did he like wild bird seed?

“No, not really,” said Amidon. “But Rankin’s was closed on Sunday.”

“He ate insects and worms at first,” said Shanahan. “And he was getting liquid from leaves and trees. He was very thirsty at first.”

“You can see the fashion statement in him,” said Amidon, who has run operations at two animal shelters and is a quiet observer of animal behavior. “You see how the fall and color of the feathers has been copied by fashion.”

“He has big spurs,” said Harden, who arrived a few minutes later, and who was tasked with capturing the bird and taking him home to Appleton. He and Pettina attempted a soft herding of the rooster into a waiting dog crate, but Chester would have none of that.

They waited until 8 p.m., when the skies darkened and the rooster went over the fence to bed. By flashlight, Bob scooped him up and drove to Appleton.

“He came through the night OK,” said Pettina, Tuesday morning. “We had hoped to successfully introduce him to our young rooster.”

That didn’t go so well.

“Sadly, in the world of chickens, you can only have one rooster,” she said.

The good news is that Chester was happy to be back with hens, indicating that he had once been part of a flock, and has been properly socialized.

“They don’t want to be solitarily walking the streets of Camden,” she said.

The bottom line: “We have a really handsome rooster that still needs a home.”

Or, his owners could step forward and take him home.

Interested? Email Bob and Pettina: bobnpet@gmail.com. But, a good home, only. This rooster is special.

Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 706-6657.