Last night we heard a bit of a ruckus. Britton didn’t want to lock the chickens all the way into the little coop because they wake up at 5am (when the sun comes out) and want out into the yard -which means one of US has to wake up at 5am on a weekend to let them out. So we opened the windows at night and figured we’d hear anything if something tried to attack them. Well, we did! AND unlike the last time which coincidentally was almost a year ago to the day, we got a good look at the culprit. It was a skunk!

Skunks move in undulations but are not very fast so we got a couple good photos

You would think we could smell him coming, but we couldn’t! I always thought skunks stunk just in general, but they don’t! Although when Britton was trying to get him to leave the yard and he threw something at him, he did raise his tail -a warning that he was prepared to spray- which made Britton high tail it away from him! He did not want to be taking a bath in tomato juice! The skunk, unlike last year’s predator (who we think was a wild field cat) couldn’t scale the fence and was trapped in our yard.

You can see the skunk next to the AC in the garden with my freshly planted peppers (click pic to enlarge)

The chickens were all understandably freaked out, as skunks are natural chicken predators. Although, I have heard that they don’t usually go after the full-grown chickens and prefer eggs and chicks to a big ol’ hen that they can’t carry away or eat all the way. But, if they can get a hold of them, they will try to kill them and then just eat the head and blood which is what happened to some of my chickens when I was a kid.

So after all the commotion, the chickens were standing in the yard with their heads stretched high and eyes wide open near our back porch. The young ones were still safe in the greenhouse and we managed to wrangle all three of the older ones back into the coop and lock it shut.

At least they are all big, healthy chickens that make a fuss if anything tries to bother them. I think it would be a good fight if it was just one skunk against all of them. But I’d rather not find out!   And I’d rather that our backyard not get skunkified either! 🙂