Well. It isn't out of the realm of possibility...one was shot about 15 miles away from our place about the time I lost that bird....but I'm pretty sure it was a coon. I trapped two, and both times, it cost me an expensive heavy duty trap because the huge, huge things broke the traps. I could hardly carry the trap and the last coon because it was so big, and that was the one that tore the coop's clean out door off. Now, opening a coop's clean out door requires a power screwdriver.
My Pyrenees seem to have solved the problem, though. Since getting them -- they are 12 weeks old now -- we haven't had any coons. The trash is never bothered now, and I was cleaning it up every morning. If I forget the compost pail on the deck's table, it is still there in the morning, still in the pail and not all over the deck. Just their presence is making the coons divert around us. If you like dogs and can handle an independent dog, I highly recommend an LGD, although two is better. A friend says she has lost one bird in five years since getting hers, and that particular hen was known to be stupid, and she didn't go into a shelter during a rainstorm. The dogs holed up, and a coon found her just when the rain ended, and the dogs couldn't get there in time to prevent the kill.
