ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

That is the sound I make this morning as I look out the kitchen door towards the garden and the chicken tractor as I do each morning to count chicken heads but today I see no chickens out and the door bent inward just enough to allow some beasty to get in to my babies so I rush out to them and find four still there all clucking to me as if they had quite a tale to tell of the night and the taking away of one of their sisters. This is the second one to be stolen from me by what I suspect was a raccoon based on the numerous footprints on the roof and all over the door that I find each morning but the first was taken through an opening in the roost for ventilation that I failed to secure to prevent just such an event as occurred. Imagine sleeping peacefully on your roost and all of a sudden a nasty little hand reaches in to your safe or so you thought little home and snatches you away to become dinner, I don't want to think about it and besides I am mad as all get out about some raccoon eating MY egg making babies and that raccoon getting the meat I was going to serve my family some day in a few years as a nice pot of chicken noodle soup so he did not just take one, now two, chickens from me he took oodles of yummy eggs and at least two lovely dinners some cold winter nights with my family and yes I see the irony as eventually I would be snatching that same chicken off her roost and slitting her throat but at least she would go fast and I would be gentle and it is just not fair.

Ok, I feel better now. Farming sucks sometimes.