Wednesday, July 12, 2006




Some Chickens and a Fox...

Although I know it's a fact of life, it's one I really resist accepting: If you raise chickens and you let them free range, there will be problems with predators. And today there was.

Earlier this spring we lost a couple of chickens to what I thought was a fox, but which several men at the school next door were certain was a coyote. Now I most definitely don't live in a rural area. We live next to our town's high school, seven tenths of a mile from Main Street, with plenty of houses right around us. BUT, there are also a few remaining fringes of woods.

I let the chickens out of their house and pen early each morning, and if I know I'm going to be away for more than a downtown errand, I put them back in the pen. But this morning I didn't even think about it as I'd had overnight company, an early run to the airport, and I left the house when the rest of my company did, about 10 am.

Without hesitation I knew what had happened when I turned into the yard an hour later. Seven of the hens were clustered by a lilac in the front yard, hyper-alert but at the same time... frozen. The only other time I'd seen them act like that was earlier in the spring when that hungry mother coy-fox stopped by for a hot chicken dinner.

Sure enough, red feathers all over the back yard, very, very upsetting. I managed to gather the remaining girls back into their pen and found that we'd lost one Rhode Island red and one of my two beloved aracunas. I wondered, I worried... had a dog come through the yard or was it the same earlier predator?

A beautiful small fox with a white-tipped tail circled the chicken pen this afternoon and I had my answer. And I honestly feel better for knowing. Somehow, it's less painful to think that a hungry wild animal did what it's beeen doing for centuries rather than a dog just... playing.

But it's still painful.

Mary

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006




At Long Last... Summer!



And to celebrate, a poem from Nancy Forrest...

TINY PINPOINTS OF LIGHT
IN THE WOODS,
JUST BUGS, SEEKING MATES
IN THE TWILIGHT.

YES, BUGS, SEEKING
CONTINUITY
WITH NO REGARD
FOR WAR, GLOBAL WARNING
OR OTHER CALAMITIES.

JUST BUGS YOU SAY, BUT
PYROTECHNICS
MORE POWERFUL THAN THE
FOURTH OF JULY.

Nancy Forrest
6/06