I'd so preferred my (misguided) thinking that we were in a raccoon-free neighborhood given our position up on a hill. I now know better.
Left Coast Mom was out and about last night on a ladies night out and I figured she was gone until at least 10 or 11pm. Much to my surprise, she came running into the house and announced, breathlessly, "there's a raccoon up the street. I gotta put the chickens away!"
I understood, implicitly that by "putting away" she meant "close the Eglu door" so we had a brief should-we-shouldn't-we discussion before she dashed out the back door to go shut the girls in for the night.
Once she'd come back inside, I learned that LCM was driving up our street when she saw something lumbering along the sidewalk and first thought "what an enormous cat!" until the "cat" turned to look at her and she caught the black mask in her headlights. Then, maternal instincts kicking in, she dashed home to secure the girls in place.
So we've got a coon in the 'hood. Guess I'd better re-evaluate our open-door policy again, knowing the predator's nearby. I wonder if the Eglu run is strong enough to keep the coons out? I wonder how I test it without jeopardizing our girls' lives?
2 comments:
Not sure how you test it. How hard is it to get under the wire? How hard to open the door? They've got surprisingly nimble fingers. We've got a string latch and spring loaded door hinges for exactly that reason.
Altho, if you see a small black banty hen that resembles a crow and goes by Danny - will you send her home? She's been AWOL since Wed apparently (long story) and we're starting to assume the worst...
Thank goodness you found this out in a fairly benign way that didn't involve a lot of grief! Those little buggers are everywhere.
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