I guess I should introduce this girl. This is a Leghorn Chicken. She lays white eggs on a very regular basis, and take a look at the comb she is sporting on top of her head. This girl has a do, don't you think?
She is from my original group of chickens, and no, she does not have a name. I do not name my chickens other than calling them girls, chickens, crazies, or Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty - they are just chickens. I will tell you that when I originally decided that I wanted chickens, everyone said, "Oh you've got to have some Legerns." Or, was it Legurns? You see, I live in the South, and we have our own way of talking around here. If you search on the Hatchery sites for "Legern" or "Legurn", you will be disappointed to find that they do not exist. I know this because I looked. Then I finally expanded my search and I found that it is actually L-E-G-H-O-R-N. You know, Fog Horn Leghorn, one of Warner Brothers all time greats. "I been, I say, I been hornswoggled!" The funny thing is that you can write Leghorn on a piece of paper and people around here will read it Legern. Or, is it Legurn?
In this picture this chick is making a nest, and she was squawking at me because I was in there bothering her. She is very good at fixing the nests when I put fresh hay in them. Chickens will spend a lot of time fixing each piece of hay into a perfect nest. This breed gives us the infamous white egg, and they have been bred for egg production. They don't like to sit their nests, they are more just a lay it and leave it kind of breed, making it all the more interesting that she will fluff this hay for hours to make it into a perfect nest.
Now that we are done with the introductions...here is the update.
I guess my trapping skills are lacking. I have had no luck in trapping the "whatever it is" that has been raiding my chicken coup. I have set the trap every night, but to no avail. What is even more disturbing is the fact that I raked the bottom of the coup floor level when I cleaned it on Monday, and I found another hole dug under the wall on Wednesday. The hole is in an area that leads from under the hay stacked in that barn. I can tell you from past experience that this is not a good sign. It is one thing to be freely feeding fresh eggs to some wayward creature, but it is entirely unacceptable when it takes up residence right next to the buffet. I am beginning to think that we have a possum at this point.
My next tactic is to switch bait from Fancy Feast, which is now full of ants and not very appealing to anyone, to regular dry cat food. I also have to make sure that my trap is set earlier in the evening. I have been setting it at my last trip to the barn which is usually around 10:00 pm, and I think we may have better luck if I set it closer to dusk. I hope this works because I can tell you that it is not very much fun to open the door to that barn every morning. I want to see an animal in that trap, but at the same time, I don't want to have to deal with an animal in that trap. Quite a dilemma, don't you think?
I ask that you all take a moment and please wish me luck, a few prayers would be greatly appreciated here, whatever you have time for. The next and the last resort will be to empty the barn and pull all of the hay bales out and just catch the thing, whatever it might be. We have done this before, and we caught 9 possums in one afternoon. It seemed that we had an entire family - Mom, kids, 2nd cousin twice removed, a crazy uncle - all living under 80 bales of horse hay. It was crazy. If anyone had heard us that day, I am sure that they would have thought that we were dieing. We switched back and forth from screaming our heads off to laughing hysterically. There were no boys in the barn that day, just girls, so you can imagine.
You should also know that I challenge the fact that possums play dead when they are threatened.
In all the chasing,
whacking with shovels,
pulling of tails,
actually throwing one across the barn!
You name it - we did it!
Not one single possum played dead.
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