Something gnawed at and bent chain link fence last night

[Leighe]

Well I'm coming in late.....but I'm in Texas and I use dog kennels for chicks growing, to keep them closer to the house, so the big chickens can't hurt them or eat their food. I put hardware cloth around the kennels and tin on top of wood for the roofs. However, I was raising rabbits for awhile and before I got the hardware cloth on, a raccoon came up to the kennel, used his hands to pull the chain link apart and went in, opened two rabbit cages and killed the rabbits. We immediately put hardware cloth on the kennel and never had anymore problems. Just wanted ya'll to know that a raccoon can certainly open chain link on kennels. Not sure if that was ya'lls problem SavageChicken because the teeth marks were not on my fence. Had a momma raccoon, with four kits, grab my dog one night by his neck and try to strangle him before i got out there and scared her and myself to death, lol. Have killed 3 skunks in the last week (amazingly they were getting in the big chicken pen.....finally found the hole) and only eating eggs. Never hurt a chicken, couldn't believe it. I knew I had one when I went in at night, like I do sometimes cause whats there to be scared of? Looked in the first nesting box and there was a skunk. I took off running and I'm pretty sure I never touched the ground, I probably screamed like a girl (and even though I'm a girl, I'm a tomboy and I don't scream usually) and grabbed my golf cart got back to house whilst calling a friend to come over, grabbed my gun and my friend met me out at the coop. We didn't catch the skunk that night but my friend got to use his slingshot on the mice. Thank God, I'm a country girl. LOVE ranchin and farmin. BTW, look for game cameras. Tie them to your trees, kennels, etc. You will be amazed at what you will see runnin around your property at night! Maybe I should invest in a thermal cam so I can see the other "heat sources" at night and decide if I wanna walk that green mile or not in the dark