The great chicken mystery…..or life is never boring no matter how pointless the excitement may be. Last night we got done at a reasonable hour, so I took Nick out for a bit of a run while I checked the woodstove. When we returned to the house he alerted on something on the porch. Since he is not allowed to bother cats, I gave him heck and started to go in the house. However, something caught my eye and I turned to find the white rooster and the hen without a beard perched on the back of a lawn chair.

This would never do; chickens are not allowed to roost on the porch. I grabbed them and chucked them out into the snow. I had just settled into my computer chair when suddenly I heard a sort of tap, tap, tap on the kitchen window. It became so annoying that I went out to see what the heck Alan was up to.
It wasn't Alan though. The tapping was caused by the white rooster banging his wings on the window above the sink as he tried to roost on the windowsill. What a pesky piece of poultry. I shined a flashlight in his eyes and he flew away.

A few minutes later Alan announced that there were feathers all over up by the stove and the other two chickens were gone. He threw the porch pair into the horse trailer and we made angry plans to deal with those darned coyotes in a very summary manner. There was talk of 22 vs. 12-gauge and where the best place to intercept their twilight peregrinations might be. How dare they come down right into the house yard and take my birds!

Then this morning Ralph came over to the barn and informed me that at least the other rooster had survived because he heard two of them crowing. Figures the coyotes would take the hen and leave that noisy bugger instead.

Later, when I went up to check Nick in his run all the chickens were there looking for stray dog kibble. The whole four of them miraculously restored to their usual feathery glory. They looked amazingly lively for having been killed by coyotes just the night before. Certainly, something chased them around while we were milking last night and there sure were a lot of feathers pulled. However, we will have to call it….dum-da-dum-dum...
the night no chickens died.