Monday, December 14, 2009

Hillbilly Christmas

So.... we've spent hundreds of dollars making a chicken fortress. And now that the weather outside is frightful and all, we even made a nice eyesore out of the darn thing by covering the whole chicken yard in tarps. It's ugly, but my ladies are dry.
Then we started noticing the past couple of weeks that something seemed to be bothering my chickens...
Something had them afraid to go in their coop at night, even when it was below freezing and they had a nice heat lamp in their cozy home.
This weekend the mystery was solved.
We've got Possums.
At least three.
And now we have to EVICT the POSSUMS.
We don't even know how the darn things got in there in the first place. Remember - it's a fortress, reinforced on top and bottom by wire mesh - a cube of wire.
But I'm a peacenik, so we've gotta do it without harming the smart little dudes. After all, they're just thinking they found the jackpot - free food, water, shelter, and even heat!
Of course the live trap didn't work.
We had to go in there like real men and take care of the problem OLD SCHOOL.
In the dark,
the pouring rain,
and with a rake as our only defense.





The chickens are surely thinking it's Armageddon as their little coop is jostled up and down like a carnival ride.
Here is a very anticlimactic video of our efforts:

Turns out I'm not such a real man when it comes to creepy crawlies at night...

2 comments:

foxy said...

Ooooooooh... I'm SO not good with possums. They totally creep me out. So were they out of there then? They never came running out at you, did they??

Lacey said...

This is the funniest post ever!

I would be doing the exact same thing, from the peacenik attitude to the rakes to the documenting the whole thing for my blog, haha. I love it!