I've been going to bed too late lately. So I finally climb in and the dogs climb in and we're in the bunkhouse and I'm thinking about Christmas. I'm listening to my mom's bed air cushion inflate and deflate in the battle against bedsores over there. A little known battle. I'm not even quite asleep it's almost 1, and then I hear a chicken screaming for its life. I wait a second to make sure it's not faking and then another high pitched screech. Huck and I jump out of bed and look out the window and then pound out there and I'm a little scared but no coyote I can't even see anything really.
I wait out there anyway and then the chicken screams again so I run into the horse area and closer to the tree with no phone light just bare hands and there's a blobby shape in there but I can't tell what it is. Possum? We haven't had a possum in a long time. They like to eat the head off a chicken. I bang a stick on the tree branches and nothing moves then something moves. Something is moving in there, farther back by the fence. Maybe a possum. I wait.
Two shapes are there on the fence. They move pretty nimbly on the wall. I have to get closer to see what they are but I really don't want to get closer. The chickens that were in that tree have all run screaming to other sections of the yard so the tree is bare. I get closer and I can make out the faint mask on the fat catted racoon. Two racoons.
We've never had racoons. But I'm thinking maybe that's why I've been getting less eggs, I thought it was cause of the cold but I think the racoons have been coming to brunch and just taking pocketsful of eggs. And now they got here for a late night egg run and there weren't any eggs so they decided to take the whole chicken. A chicken is a wrestling match, they almost weight the same. It's like two fat kids wrestling over a lollipop if you could say fat kids anymore.
The horses come over one by one in the dark to see what I'm looking at. They gaze for awhile with me and aren't worried by the racoons eventually moving off along the fence when I throw a ball at them. The horses have seen alot of nighttime action I guess and none of it involves carrots so they chalk it up as none of their business. Dewey aims his butt near me so I will scratch where he can't reach. Since I'm just standing there doing nothing involving hay or carrots. I just want this nighttime raid over and never repeated. Do I leave lights on? Do racoons stay away if the lights are on?
I heard Nathan's car driving in through the neighborhood cause it's the world's loudest car and then I hear his voice floating in the backyard driveway saying mom you still up?
and then there's a chicken over here.
I tell him of the thwarted massacre and the chickens scattering for less violent regions, and we catch three chickens in the driveway. My arms full of feathers Nathan says you need help? But I tell him to go to bed, I'll catch as many as I can.
So Huck and I try and catch the rest and toss them into the old bunny hutch which is too small for so many chickens it's like an italian bus in tourist season. Huck is really good at finding the ones I can't see and rousting them out of their secret hiding places and then I try and catch their tails as they dinosaur run past me. I know you understand the stand off with a chicken at 1 am in the mud where you have to act like Bess in a basketball game: Freeze. Hunker down pretty low. Wait out the move of the other player, block each direction they're trying to go, and watch for the moment you can snake your arm out and try and grab in split seconds. They're fast little fuckers.
I get about 20 chickens in. I periodically throw them in the bunny hutch as I catch them and when I open the door to throw a few in, always one will run out. This would not even be a fun game at noon at a birthday party.
Finally I think I have them all. Huck seems satisfied and I don't see any loose chickens or skulking racoons. Now I have to figure out a nighttime hutch for them because they can't be on a crowded bus every night. I liked them in their regular habitat in the trees, and they liked themselves in the trees too. A chicken likes to pick her spot in a leafy high roost, with the company of hishertheir friends. So I'll have to try and recreate a safe roosting area somehow with not very good building skills. Plus I hate chicken wire, it likes to scratch you up so much when you're building stuff. Poor Nathan will help I'm sure.
I woke up this morning and let all the chickens out of the bus, and two others came wandering up that had spent the night rogue in the bush and lived to tell. The farm seems intact and the barn girl slept a whole almost five hours!
There's enough of them that if only they had tiny arms and liked to build. Little hardhats. We could get their nighttime area spiffed up in a jiff and then I'd take them all for burritos in the van.
But they're staring at me like I'm already laying every breakfast you ever ate.
So I fed them and the horses. This biped with arms will type this and then brainstorm the living situation for the armless. Leave them to their eggs.
