Blue Heaven Rooster Cemetery

Residents and visitors to Key West, Florida are likely familiar with the quirky Blue Heaven restaurant. And it’s frequented as much, if not more often, by the local feral chickens.

What many are not aware of, however, is that the courtyard of the restaurant has a small graveyard for roosters and fighting cocks—the descendants of which now roam the Keys freely.

In past lives Blue Heaven has been an ice cream parlor, bordello, dance hall, tavern, and pool hall with a boxing match refereed by none other than Ernest Hemingway. Some of the writer’s famously polydactyl feline familiars have also been laid to rest here. It seems that in death, the cats and birds have achieved a peaceful coexistence that escaped them in life.

Today, the descendants of the creatures buried in the courtyard cemetery (both feline and fowl) stop in regularly to snatch a bite from unsuspecting patrons and just maybe, one could imagine, to pay tribute to their progenitors.