We had an uninvited visitor to the henhouse last night. Britton woke up when he heard a bunch of screams from the chickens at about midnight. The creature went in the henhouse and attacked the girls. It appears to have pulled out Omelette and then Greenfoot. Luckily, they escaped, but not without the loss of a lot of feathers.  Britton saw it scale the fence. He thought it was a darker color with a thin body and longish tail. We had to coax them all to get back into the coop and actually grab and put Greenfoot back in, she was so shaken up.

We locked up the coop really good and after some tossing and turning, we finally got back to sleep.

Then at about 3am, I woke up hearing the chickens fluttering around and making noise, though not as noisy as the earlier episode. I woke up Britton and he ran to the window. He said he could hear the creature scratching on the coop, but couldn’t get in. When Britton opened the window next to the coop, the Thing took off again right over the back fence to the empty field. Again, a blur.  It makes me wonder where Kitty was when all of this was happening since he is an outdoor cat.

Many of Greenfoot’s wing and back feathers

Losing feathers is actually an antipredation defense to help them get out of the grips of harm’s way. When a predator tries to grab them, the feathers tear loose and all the predator has is a handful (pawful) or mouthful of feathers, but the bird (hopefully, and in this case) survives.

Omelette is missing front feathers

Greenfoot’s wing feathers and some back feathers are completely gone

We’re not sure what it was, but it could possibly be a raccoon, weasel, skunk or maybe a fox, but it didn’t have a fluffy tail or obvious scent, so I am leaning toward weasel or mink. We laid in bed talking about possible solutions for about an hour (until 4am). We thought of making them live in a chicken run, but 1) it’s a lot of work to build one, 2) they will wreck the yard if it stays in only one place too long, 3) I wouldn’t want to be completely locked up my whole life, 4) the creature struck in the middle of the night, so it is unlikely it would come during the day.

We also talked about getting a gun of some sort to shoot it, but we were afraid we might mess up our fence or accidentally shoot Kitty or something. We don’t own a gun, but I can see how a farmer or rancher would need one! We also talked about electrifying our back fence -which might work, but is expensive. We are probably going to try and find a live-trap and see if we can’t catch this thing.

What do you think? Any ideas what it could be? Any ideas of how to get rid of it? Anyone have a trap they could loan us? Part of this was our fault. We had been spoiled with never having an incident so we got lazy and didn’t shut them in securely every night. That might be all we need to do to keep them safe, but I guess it’s kind of like people who leave their doors unlocked every night and then the one night someone breaks in you say, ‘well we should have locked it’.

At least everyone made it through ok. I left Schnoodle outside today to keep an eye on things while we’re at work. Not that a blind, deaf 13-year old dog could be of much help, but maybe it will help as a deterrent. Britton also “marked his/our territory” (peed on the fence) this morning as some of the advice to keep predators away suggests to do.

Argh. What a long, restless night -for all of us.