If you don’t want to read a terribly sad story, leave this blog now.

What I’m about to tell you is not about a Happy New Year. It’s New Years Eve about 7:00 pm, and my Mom went to get all the cats in; I went down to the basement with her to help, and Rocky our giant chocolate lab had gotten out of the dog pen and the other dogs were barking like they never barked before.  Something was going on in the chicken house. I grabbed the spotlight, and Mom and I went up to the hen house. Originally, there were about 30 chickens on our roost; I shined the light through the chicken house window there was only one chicken on the roost.  We opened the door and there were three chickens dead in the house and feathers were everywhere. I said to myself, “Rocky couldn’t do this he’s to big to fit in the chicken doors. It had to be coyotes, there had to be more than one.”  We found five more dead chickens outside.  I couldn’t believe it, a massacre that happened so quickly.  We found Ethel, one of our Barred Rocks, and she was alive but had a tooth hole in her as big around as a marble. And one of our bravest roosters was found hysterically shrieking because he was in shock and ran straight into the fence.

I’ve read that chickens are as blind as we are in the dark, so they’re completely helpless. After identifying the chickens that didn’t make it, there were a total of 8. The spot light was fading and we managed to find one of our Old English hens, Mimi, and one of our Black Giants, Lily, alive and not one scratch on them. But at this rate we had to wait until morning to find the others.

After a sleepless night I woke up in the New Year at about 10:45 am, went down stairs to find Mom so we could go look for the chickens.  Mom had already told me she had gone looking for them, and she found them with Roo another one of our roosters.  He was the rooster that would always attack us and was the reason the other hens were alive.  So now we only have seventeen chickens. I only said one thing about the coyotes, “They’ll be back.”  I think this whole episode was God saying to be more aware, and prepared, and more responsible in the New Year.

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year.

S@m #25