Sure, it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As my daughter exclaimed, "Martin Luther King was black!"
But that's not the black we're talking about here. We're talking about death -- the death of nine fine chickens at the teeth of a scruffy, mangy, fox.
The roll: Sophie, Cupid, Vanilla, Comet, Glen, Little Pumpkin, Fudge (or daughter of Fudge, depending who you talk to), and two young cochin roosters who never even had names.
The good news is that the fox did not survive to kill again. He was in the henhouse when Rex came home. Rex shut him in, borrowed a pistol, and shot him -- twice, for good measure.
The irony is that I had seen the fox earlier in the day. He was no bigger than a large cat, and he had almost no fur on his tail. I chased him under the cabin, then, because we were not going to be home, I shut the chickens in the henhouse -- so they would be SAFE! Instead, the fox ripped through the roof of the side pen, went in the little side-pen entrance to the coop, and the chickens were there for the picking. Sitting ducks, so to speak.
There is a kind of funny side to this. A neighbor kid visiting Kayti, upon hearing of the massacre, said, "Our dog killed a couple of your chickens." Upon closer questioning, he said his father "buried one of them." This must have happened back when the ground was soft. Thanks, neighbor, for letting us know!
We now have two roosters and six hens. And plans to create a bigger, stronger, safer environment for them!
No comments:
Post a Comment