Oh
They really are the sweetest chickens!
Get him good girl!!!I don't know if the same principle would apply to rats, but mice like to crawl along baseboards and walls. They don't like being out in the open. Maybe that will help with your trap strategy.
Bravo... I am impressed with your killer instinct. I think chicken keepers need more of that. I believe it is important to avenge your hens. I would like to hear how you accomplished it and what you are planning to perhaps bag the remaining coon.
Here is my story: I caught one at 4:30 a.m. today. I got a baby monitor with sound and a night vision camera. At 4:30 this morning, I was wakened by noise in the pen. It sounded like they were trying to open the door latches. I opened my eyes just in time to see a raccoon walking in front of the camera. I scrambled out there like a colonial Minuteman! By the time I got out there, it seemed to have vanished. I thought I scared it off. Just as I was about to leave, I looked up and saw a coon looking down on me from the rafters. I went on the attack. He got away. I was standing there thinking what I was going to do next. I looked up where he had been and saw something suspicious. I jabbed at it with a lawn implement and, sure enough, it was a second coon!! This one was not so lucky. I hated, hated, hated to do it, but I got him. Also...I found Minnie's body. They tried to drag her out of the pen through the roof rafters. They got her as far as the top of the roof of the hen house. As I was working to strengthen my defenses on the house, I looked up and saw her little feet hanging off the roof of the hen house. Poor baby. Poor, poor baby. She has been partially avenged.
P.S. I left the body of the dead coon outside the pen overnight in an attempt to send a message to any others out there. Sounds silly, but it made me feel like I was doing something. It was helping me get my "mad" out.
Got rid of it the next morning.
