Standard Saturday Night.

WARNING: If you are, in any way, a fan of PETA or any other animal-loving nonprofit organization, you will probably hate me after this post. Please hold the hate mail, because I probably don't give a shit anyway.

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I consider myself an animal lover. Always have been and always will be.

But there are some I love more than others. Dogs, for example, will always hold a special place in my heart. Cats, not so much.

I love giraffes and dolphins and sea otters and tigers and lions. Even sharks, which scare the living shit out of me, seem amazing in their own right. I love black bears and elephants and roly-polys, and I hate the thought of anyone hurting or killing animals without purpose. Hell, I can't even watch "Animal Planet" without wanting to cry. Something about survival of the fittest breaks my heart.

All that being said, that didn't stop me from going to a cock fight last Saturday night. It's a local tradition, apparently, so I had to get off my high horse to blend in. ... That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My boyfriend, a couple friends and I decided to venture down to Santa Rita to take part in the village's annual fiesta. For those who don't know anything about Guam, fiestas are held to celebrate each respective village's patron saint (it's heavily Catholic here). And those fiestas are the only time poker and cock fighting are acceptable in religious activities.

We walked in to the community center, and immediately got a few strange looks. We were THE only haoles in the room, and I imagine, one of few who dared to swagger into local fiestas wanting to place a bet on the biggest cock. We were immediately solicited to take part in an ongoing Texas Hold 'Em tournament for a "minimum" $50 buy-in.

Those sort of rules make it easy to buy a pot if you have enough cash ... and enough balls. So we declined. It's a good thing too, because a local Chamorro woman, obviously a shark, quickly took control of the table and systematically began knocking off the big guns. (Note: You can always pick out a poker shark by how they handle their chips. She was throwing them from one hand to another, and effortlessly landing them in a neat, stacked pile. I've never seen this done in person before then.)

To the right of the poker table, in the middle of the community center, was what appeared to be a miniature fighting ring. There were feathers scattered on the dirt floor, along with tiny drops of blood. I got a guilty, Michael Vick kind of feeling immediately, but I played along.

We ventured over to the opposite corner of the room just in time to see one guy take his cock out of a small, A-frame box he carried in. It was a big, gerthy sonuvabitch -- with bright-colored feathers and a hefty body. And he cradled it, like it was some sort of pet. "He will win," he replied to me when I asked if I should bet. The man, dressed in ratty jeans and an old T-shirt, did not find humor in a room full of men gently stroking their cocks. I'm not sure he was capable of it.

The first fight was imminent, it seemed. And I soon found that once the cock-fighting leader brought out his tiny suitcase, it would only be another 10 minutes or so.

The suitcase, which every owner carried with him, contained an arsenal of tiny blades and all the tools to attach them. The blades were all different sizes -- as there are all different-sized cocks -- and they are purchased in the Philippines and transported to Guam illegally. One man held the cock, while another held up different blades to one of the cock's legs until he found just the right size. Then, he painstakingly attached it with a thin leather strap, wrapping and wrapping with the highest attention to detail.

So as not to bare the cock carrier any harm, a tiny sheath covered the blade until the cock was ready to fight. When both cocks were armed, they were brought into the ring. The owners, or cock raisers if you may, were still holding their pets at this point. A few times, to get them riled up, they guided them toward the other cock.

Then, as soon as all bets were in, it was on.

The owners removed the sheaths, and let the cocks go at it. There was a referee too, who signaled the beginning of the cock brawl. There was a swarm of feathers, and if the cock was good enough, he could blade the other under his wing, severing his main artery.

It was the most brutal thing I've ever been a part of. I'm not proud of it, by any means, but damn if it wasn't an experience. There were men banging on the wooden rails surrounding the ring, yelling through the plexi-glass walls. And when it was clear one of the cocks didn't survive the fight, there were a few shouts of victory before they swaggered over to the "house" to collect their winnings.

Then, it was on to the next fight. Not immediately, mind you, because there was plenty of cock analyzing to do before then. All the owners would get their cocks out of the A-frames, hold them or put them in makeshift cages for others to eye.

There are certain things that make one cock a favorite over another cock. Size, of course, but everyone knows that's not the only thing that sets one cock apart from another. There's the strength of crow too, and the color (light-colored cocks do better on clear, moon-lit nights) and whether or not they can follow your finger with their beaks.

Laugh if you want, but there is a whole culture surrounding cocks. These men spend hours every week -- not to mention thousands of dollars buying, raising and betting -- around the ring. A girl from my work said she remembers her father not coming home many nights when she was young because he was at the cock fights. She always knew when because there'd be McDonald's to eat for breakfast when she woke up.

My boyfriend walked away $20 poorer than when we walked into the Santa Rita Community Center that night. His friend, an old farmhand from Minnesota, walked out $20 richer. He's had plenty of experience sizing up cocks in the chicken pens.

Despite the new experience, it was a standard Saturday night. You can walk into any bar in any city on any night in the world and see what I saw that moon-lit night in Guam. ... A slough of guys standing around, holding their cocks and wanting to fight. And rest assured, the biggest doesn't always win.