"The Clever Roosters" is an allegory about a colony of enslaved chickens who are inspired with the idea of freedom by a foreign rooster . After a few escape, the master crushes the rebellion by corrupting the remaining chickens: he gives the most "insolent" ones official titles, privileges, and better food . These newly-empowered "clever" roosters become tyrants over their own kind, choosing a well-fed, hierarchical slavery over the dangerous pursuit of freedom.