I was going through some old posts of mine and found this one. Thought it was funny enough to share again. lol
Sunday, February 18, 2007
A night on the homestead
At 3:30 am, I was running out the door in red pj’s, hair all wild with a large broom handle in one hand and an ax in the other! lol What a photo that would have made!
I had just fallen asleep at 3am after working, and watching an hour of tv to help me get to sleep. I woke at about 3:15 to Julia tapping on my shoulder to climb into bed with us. We fell back asleep, then at at 3:30am I woke up to my husband jumping out of bed, and chickens squaking horribly!
My husband grabed the big flashlight and was out on our bedroom deck trying to see what was going on in the chicken coop/house. They were squaking in a way that you just KNEW something was in there. It was scary because we’ve found cougar prints around here lately, and one day the chickens fence was pushed down by a large animal and the cougar prints were around the chicken house. The cougar couldn’t get at the hens though, since we close them up in their hen house at night.
I went running down the stairs, looking for the baseball bat. Couldn’t find it, so I grabed the next best thing. A heavy broom handle. lol I ran out the door, and see the small ax on the back deck, so I grab that and head out to the chicken house. Hubby got out there shortly after me, and I gave him the ax. We head out there, and we can see the doors are still shut, so it can’t be a cougar but there’s definitely something in there, freaking the chickens right out. Their spazzy cries were unmistakably scared. Hubby cracked the door open just a tiny bit, to try and see what was in there, without letting it out. The poor chickens were all freaking out, trying to shove their heads out of the door. I thought they would all die of strokes, they were so terrified!
Finally we could see a black animal in there. It was a MINK!
We opened the door to let the hens out of the way. We step into the chicken house, and sure enough, he killed one of our girls. I was so mad! I took that handle and tried my best to whack that thing over the head, but he got away from me and I missed. He scurried out through a hole in the corner.
We spent the next 2 hours cutting and nailing pieces of 2×4’s to cover up all the gaps in the chicken coop. At one point Joshua (our son) and I saw the mink again. The little buggar tried to steal an egg right in front of us!
I will say, I am not a violent person, I don’t wish any animal any harm, but to me, this is different. That nasty thing could have, and would have killed many more of our hens if we hadn’t heard it in there. Minks are part of the weasel family and are notorious for killing much more then they will ever need to eat.
Hopefully he won’t be able to find his way back into the hen house again! Joshua’s trying to figure out how to catch the thing.
I wonder if we had Rocky the rooster at that time, if the mink would have even dared to enter the hen house.
Some how, I think not.
*Unfortunately, since I first wrote this post, our rooster was killed by something, we’re not sure what though, while we were away one day. The hens were all safely hiding in their hen house when we got home, but not Rocky. He must of died trying to protect them from something but we have never figured out what.