RIP Paper

 I was going to write a blog post yesterday about a few things that are going on.  One of which being a phone app called Merlin, which will record bird songs and tell you what birds you are hearing.
I had to do some fussing to get my phone to work with it.  Finally rearranged and cleared up some available memory and got it to load.  I walked outside and heard bird sounds that I did not want to hear.  The sounds of chickens panicking.

I got there in time to see the raccoon frantically escaping the scratch yard.  After Malcom got killed last week, I went over the coop, tightening a slightly loose board, reinforcing the threshold under the door, checking for any means of access.
What I missed was a loose wire.

The pen is not made of chicken wire (obviously the most commonly used fencing for chicken coops).  We used a strong welded stock wire, with a 1.5" x 2" grid.  But near the coop itself, a couple of the welds had come loose, so the that horizontal wire could slip down a couple of inches.  If I hadn't caught the raccoon going through it, I wouldn't have seen or believed it - she was able to force open a gap barely over 3" across and somehow get through it, with the wires springing close behind it.

So I got there in time to see where she got in.  But I did not get there in time to keep her from killing another chicken.  It was Paper (of my little tribe of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, and Spock).  She was the one I wrote about in January, who had become mysteriously crippled, and who I nursed back to health, and who I had the Museum babysit when I went on my Roads Scholar trip because she hadn't reintegrated back into the flock and they were picking on her.

The one who got used to special treatment from me, and would jump into my lap.

Dammit dammit dammit dammit dammit.

A friend suggested that I move them somewhere safer.  But the pen and coop is the safest thing I have - we *way* overbuilt it.  The nickname is Stalag Chicken.
I love chickens, but they poop like crazy and can get stinky.  I really can't have house chickens.

So I was out there last night, in the dark and the rain (which didn't deter the mosquitoes and biting flies) with fencing wire, reinforcing that area.

I pray it's enough.