A relief but I hate when it has to be done Feck.
What I came home to.
I got home from work and went outside to check the chooks. I went in the backyard and lo and behold, I have chickens (!) strolling (!) around, free, in the yard. Big Bird just walking around with her big white poof, like I just let them free range, unsupervised. Half of my big girls (and the Originals) walking around, free, all over the backyard.
Big pile of feathers on the ground.
I start screaming for my husband to come out here..."What the feck..why are my chickens strolling around??!! Go get the keys!!!" because I am doing a head count and coming up one short. I look in the coop, my sweet Brahma bantam, Willow, is gone.
Clueless DH is like, "I heard Bucco barking and sniffing around under the deck before when I let them out, you better check under the deck" (and why didn't you think to look at the time? Not that it would have mattered).
I go running towards the deck, take a flying leap over a big log that is by the firepit, gash my shin, land on my bad wrist, while noticing the pile of unmoving chicken under the deck that used to be one of my favorite chickens, Willow. Sweet Willow, who would always fly up on my shoulder when I got mealworms, sweet Willow, who would peck the back of my pants if I wasn't paying enough attention to her. I loved that chicken. Something got her and ripped her throat out.
Somehow, the side of the run that DH had covered in hardware cloth had come open. There is a breach. DH says the staples must have popped out, and so he nailed it. So Maya must have gotten out through a small breach, it wasn't my fault, I am not a bad chicken mom, I didn't miss her at headcount. Doesn't make me feel any better.
Meanwhile, in the other (secure) smaller run, my sweet Serama Suzi somehow has half the top of her beak ripped off, a chunk out of her comb, blood all over her chest, tail down, looking traumatized and with an empty crop at sundown.
I just spent the last hour and a half trying to get her to eat and drink (which she finally did, thank you @rjohns39 for your ghostly voice in my head telling me to get a can of tuna, cuz the lifesaving egg/olive oil/mealworm shake just wasn't that appealing). I put her in a hospital cage in the garage. I am nursing my traumatized self with a Founders Breakfast Stout, which my almost-equally traumatized husband was nice enough to get me while I was cleaning the blood off of Suzi.
If I lose one more chicken (or anything else happens) I am getting a game cam and a live stream. And perhaps a shotgun (wait, did Yoga Girl just say that? Yes she did).
RIP, sweet Willow. I will miss you badly.
(Edited, as usual, for the world's worst typing. Feck it.)
yah staples are temporary .. washers and screws or sandwiched between boards
