A FRENCH rooster, who became a symbol of tensions between traditional rural France and encroaching urbanity in a court battle over his early-morning crowing, has died, his owner said Thursday.

Maurice the cockerel rose to national fame after his dawn cock-a-doodle-doos so annoyed a retired couple with a holiday home on the picturesque island of Oleron that they took the owner to court in a bid to silence him.

The case last year was seen as a symbol of the strains between the traditions of rural France and city dwellers, who use the countryside as a place for second homes but have a thin skin for countryside smells and sounds.

His owner Corinne Fesseau said Maurice, 6, had died of coryza – a respiratory infection common among chickens – during the lockdown against the novel coronavirus.

Maurice, however, had the last cock-a-doodle-doo – the French court threw out the legal complaint and he was allowed to carry on with his morning ritual unimpeded.(SD-Agencies)