RIP Chickens

Well, I was going to blog about the fabulous Greek meatballs and salad Daniel made for dinner last night, but that story got overshadowed by the Chicken Massacre of 2012.

I came back from walking with Sammy about 7:30pm to find the backyard full of feathers and, in the middle of it all, one deceased chicken. I ran inside to alert the Search & Rescue team (Daniel) to look for any survivors/identify bodies. At that very instant our neighbour called to say that Ms. Fox, the culprit, was leaving her property headed back towards ours with a chicken in her mouth; she reported that there was one survivor huddled by her house. We spotted another survivor in our parking area. Then, Ms. Fox emerged from the woods onto our lawn, quickly saw she was outnumbered by humans, and headed back into the forest. 

Daniel collected survivor #1 while I ran through the woods to the neighbour's to collect survivor #2. A third survivor was recovered, huddled in the ditch across the road by the mailbox. All chickens lost a lot of feathers and were in shock, but they seemed ok otherwise. Our girls must have put up a fight! We put them into their house, safe from Ms. Fox, and locked the door for the night. Their free-ranging days are over for a while, and egg-production will be significantly lower, but we are lucky to have three remaining.

After all, it is spring, and Ms. Fox probably has babies to feed; that's life in the country. Our chickens had very happy lives for almost two years, roaming the backyard eating bugs, taking dust baths, being free. 

R.I.P. chickies.