Big wings, big thighs, big breasts, oh my!

Sollitto's Liquor Mart, 905 Narragansett Boulevard, Providence
(401) 781-2260

Nothing calls attention to your business better than a freakishly large fiberglass animal. This fantastic fowl has graced the sidewalk in front of Sollitto's Liquor store since around 1969, when, at the suggestion of his brother, Domenic Sollitto bought it at an auction for $200.

It's been stolen at least twice, once in the early 1970s by a Brown University fraternity that employed a pickup truck to make off with the bird, and once in the late 1990s by less-resourceful Johnson & Wales students who tried to drag it away on foot. The Brown students reportedly got caught because a postman saw them muscling the ungainly 150-pound cock into their dorm, and reported the sighting to Sollitto. The safe return of the rooster was brokered by the dean of students a few weeks later. Supposedly a case of bourbon was suggested as ransom, but whether that was the dean's idea or the students', we don't know. The J&W kids didn't do nearly as well. They were spotted by patrons of a nearby bar, who gave chase as the students carried the statue down Indiana Avenue. Thinking only of their own interests, the kids dropped the chicken, leaving a crack that you can still see today. As a result of these shenanigans, the bird is now brought inside the store each night to remove the temptation to larceny.

The rooster became a booster for belligerent American patriotism sometime after 9/11, with the painted admonition, "USA, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT." Prior to that, it bore the harmlessly capitalistic and far less jingoistic "SPIRITS LOW, SEE SOLLITTO."

The rooster was featured in a Zippy the Pinhead cartoon on May 30, 2006, which poked fun at the idea of a barnyard fowl spouting narrow-minded patriotism. Zippy pointed out that chickens are more closely identified with, um, being chicken than with bravery, and the rooster agreed that "Cutting and running [is] the new patriotism!" Maybe the punchline hit home for Sollitto, because the last time we saw it, in January 2008, the bird had been rendered messageless.

A second giant rooster once stood in a prominent spot at Wright's Farm Restaurant in Burrillville. A comparison of photos shows that Sollitto's and Wright's roosters appear to have come from the very same clutch of fiberglass eggs. If not brothers, they are at least close cousins. Wright's rooster can still be seen, but it's somewhat hidden on the roof of a shed at the back of the restaurant complex.

You may well wonder, given their residence in Rhode Island, if these statues are of the famed Rhode Island Red breed of chicken. They are not. In fact, try as we might to find a picture online of a living rooster with a white body and a red tail, we came up empty handed. Perhaps, and this is just a guess, the paint scheme for both roosters was informed by depictions of the Warner Brothers cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn. The latest painting of Sollitto's rooster gives him a green wattle and legs. You can't tell us that ever occurs in nature. In any case, these fiberglass roosters are found all over the country, and given that they've probably been painted many times since their manufacture, they share remarkably similar color schemes. See Debra Jane Seltzer's page of Big Critters for more compare-and-contrast fun.

This article last edited March 26, 2008