The Adventures of Patty and Emery Part 2

Emery walked into the house after work, kissed me on the cheek and asked if I would like to go out to our favorite Italian restaurant for Pizza, ( I adore pizza, its my favorite food ). I was ready in a flash. We sit at a quiet little table by the window, gazing at each other in the soft light, romantic music playing in the background, and the pizza....ahhhh, simply perfect. However the conversation was that of two farm folk without a squeamish bone in their bodies. " So, did it take the heads off of the chickens ?" I ask in a perfectly normal tone. "No, the heads were still on", replied Emery . My next question, "What part did it eat ? " Then we start planning our next step in catching the hen house murderer. Emery decides in perfect man manner that we need some new spy equipment, a listening device. After our romantic meal with the farm talk conversation we head off to the store in search of what we need to identify this creature that is killing off our poultry. Target has just what we need...a $16 baby monitor that will work up to 600 Ft. We looked at the baby monitors with video cameras but opted out of those. $16 was a lot better than $200. When we got home, Emery went to work setting up and testing our newest spy equipment. He figured that we would hear some commotion, be able to run out there and see what it is, where it got in and where it would get out when it saw him. Well, it sorta worked. Just around 2 am, we heard something that sounded like a creature climbing the chicken wire, that meant it wasn't a skunk, they don't climb like that. Emery was putting on his boots fast as he could, then in a second we heard a hen being taken down. Fast as lightening and terrible to hear. Emery was out there in a seconds time but not soon enough. There in the middle of the hen house was the biggest, meanest looking raccoon you ever saw. Yes, they can look mean. Emery saw where it was getting in, and then cornered the murderous villain into a live trap. Of course it wasn't all that easy and we never got back to bed until 4 am, but the new equipment helped us solve a serious problem. We buried the hen this morning. 2 ducks and 3 chickens total have been lost to this barnyard predator. We know what we need to do today, the places we need to seal up and make the hen house a haven for our egg layers.

Now, we just have to catch that snake that is eating all our eggs !

By the way, this new "spy" equipment will come in handy when the goats are kidding...we will know just when to head out to the barn.