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 just fell asleep at 3am. I had been cutting out pads, and then watched 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 Graydon jumping out of bed, and chickens squaking horribly!

Graydon grabed the big flashlight and was out on the master 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 though, since we keep them closed in at night in their house.

I go 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 run out the door, and see the small ax on the back deck, so I grab that and head out to the chicken house. Graydon 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. Graydon 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 freaked!

Finally, Graydon could see a black animal in there. It was a MINK!

Graydon 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 2x4's to cover up all the gaps in the chicken coop. At one point, Joshua (he came out when he heard Graydon run back in the house) 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 chickens 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 read online that their fur is worth 82.00 US a piece. lol (no, we won't kill/skin the thing, as tempting as that is right now).