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| If you're getting tired of seeing pictures like this, imagine how tired I am of drawing them. |
Around midnight, I awoke to a loud, distressed clucking. I ran outside and two of our hens were in the coop clucking like mad.
We are supposed to have three hens.
I heard something scamper over the fence, and quickly grabbed my two birds and locked them in an outdoor utility room. (Our feral cat lives there as well, but she is too small to go after a chicken.)
I got in bed, and then a half-hour later, I heard the clucking again; I ran out, but the chickens in the utility room were perfectly fine. They were like, "Nobody here but us chickens." So I ran into the backyard, following the clucking, and found our other chicken, lying in back of the coop, stunned and wobbly, but still alive. The predator, which was either a raccoon or a fox, was high-tailing it to the fence line.
I put our chicken in the utility room with the others. As for her survival, I don't think I'd give her better than a 40% chance; I didn't find any blood, but she was extremely wobbly and weak. On the other hand, she was clucking up a storm.
It sucks having your personal property gone after twice in such a short space of time. The chickens bother me more than the break-in. The GPS didn't know anything was happening to it, and I don't feel a moral duty to safeguard it like with a chicken.
Still, there's solace to be had. Every person is allotted a certain amount of good luck in his lifetime. So when I run into a sucky streak, I don't feel like the universe has turned its back on me, but just that I'm saving up my ration.
