Okay, so I'm about shaking still..GRRR... I was so tired tonight, and ended up completely forgetting to lock the chickens up!! Well, my son had a nap and woke me up after I had been sleeping for about an hour cuz he wanted something to drink (he's watching a movie in bed w/ me). The lightbulb went off in my head that I forgot to lock them up. I go out there in the pitch dark half-asleep (using porch light from the house), and there is a huge critter in the run! OMG! It was a raccoon. I about died. It was going crazy and running back and forth slamming against the coop trying to get out while I managed to lock the chicken coop door shut. I then shut him in the run, and came inside and called dh (who's at work and gone all week) asking him what to do. He told me to go let it back out. No, I want it DEAD! It knows where my chickens are now! GRRR.... He tells me to go out there and that it probably crawled back out. Yep, it did. So it crawled over our what...8 foot chicken wire wall...and got itself out. Scary! OMG, I so shutter to think if I would have slept through the night. It would have killed every one of our remaining chickens and babies...UGH.. Makes me sick. We have never forgot to shut them in before. It was just 10:00 when I got out there now. I will be closing them in earlier from here on out! Good grief........ I can't believe how lucky I was..truly... I just had our first (and hopefully last) chicken catastrophe this past weekend w/ gnats (believe it was gnats), and if I were to have another I and my boys would have been beyond devastated.... Anything I should do now that he knows where the chickens are? I didn't have anything in the coop for him to smell, but there were rinds out there last week. I am wondering if that's why he came back??? I'm guessing he didn't realize there were chickens sleeping in the coop that he could have walked right into.. UGH... They are very secure and locked up now, but now I worry for when they are not
Wow. What an experience! But everyone's okay, so take a deep breath. I've lived in areas where raccoons have always been. My folks have a koi pond that used to get hit about once a week... I'd find the heads on the lawn. After trying just about everything to discourage them (electrical stuff, traps, etc), they fashioned a screen cover for the pond, which they'd put on like clockwork at dark. Coons will always come and go, but a reminder alarm to lock-up is eternally indispensable.
