[TheForge] Re: Fox news

[Mike Spencer]

> It makes me sick, 24 dead chickens.

I know the feeling.  Since there's nothing to be done now, perhaps a
little levity will help.

Forty or so years ago, our hens were living in a disused VW Microbus,
maybe a dozen and a half of them.  One morning we found several of
them dead and one gone, evidence of a raccoon as the culprit.  He was
back the next night and got some more.  Laid for him with a shotgun
and a live hen staked out for bait.  Missed him in the total darkness,
scared the daylights out of the bait chicken.  Must have scared, or at
least mildly annoyed, the 'coon because he didn't return right away.

A couple of months later, when there were big banks of snow along our
narrow gravel road, I heard men's voices outside around 11:00 at night
and went to investigate.  Two guys were digging their car out of the
snow bank they'd ploughed into trying to miss a 'coon that was walking
down the middle of the snowy road.  Dang, I thought, you coulda just,
you know, *hit* him.

A couple of nights later, I was driving home and there the SOB was,
boldly huffing down the middle of the road toward our hen house.  And
I buried our old Volvo deep in the snowbank trying to hit him.  Missed.
Dang.  So then I had to get out the shovel and dig myself out, too.
Double-dang.

Next day, I followed the tracks.  The bastard was hiking nearly a mile
along the middle of the road to get to the poultry counter.

Well, now we no longer keep chickens and we live-trap the 'coons to
keep them from devastating the corn.  2008 must have been a bumper year
for 'em because we relocated 8 'coons to the other side of the river
five miles away.  Only one this year so far.

I kinda doubt that foxes will fall for a live trap, though.



- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^