Now I know where my chicken eggs have been going.... aka How I'm Spending My Fall Vacation...

First?

Public enemy NumberOne.  

(I'm thinking of making copies and putting them on telephone posts. Evil possum.! )



I am madder than my rooster at this moment.

There I was in the dark trying to get the last chicken into the roosting pen when...


Let me start over.


It's the middle of the night and the chickens and the dogs started barking.  Barking and squawking and I'm in the house thinking that that doesn't sound right. So out I go into the night to see if maybe one of them has managed to fly out of the pen. I  should be so lucky.  Two of the hens were clucking distress and the rooster and other hens are perched up on the fence.  None of them are on their  roost.  I managed to shoo the rooster and one hen into the enclosure with the other two hens but there was still one left. So I think to myself, "She needs to calm down. Good time to check on the eggs."  I have two broody hens that have been "setting".   We thought that we'd heard a peep of a baby. I was anxious to check while the hens were up from their nest.

What a surprise.

There inside sitting on the nest wasn't a hen but a possum.


A big, nasty, smiling, egg yokes coming out of his mouth, broken egg shells everywhere possum.

There in the middle of the night, while I was trying to coax that last hen into the roosting area, that possum was munching on my girl's eggs.


That instant? I named him Thomas because he was smiling this big ole grin like it was an honor for him to have caused such malicious mischief. (*See below)

I was not amused.

I managed to get the hen into a safe area and the lid up on the nesting place. Mercy only knows what the neighbors are thinking because every other word  I said out loud wasn't nice.  I've got my rake trying to contain that furry rodent long enough to get the water hose.   The possum just sitting there with egg yoke breath. I couldn't stand it any more.

(Do not lecture me about the sanctity of life, Gentle Reader.  That rodent could have killed my chickens.)

At that moment, I did the only thing that I could do.

I sprayed him with the water hose. 

I'd keep spraying him too. I didn't want him to EVER come back. Not EVER.

I kept spraying him as he waddled from the hen's nest across the hen yard.  I'm thinking that I'll find out how it got under the fence.

It didn't crawl under the fence. Oh no.

And this part really made me mad.

I have 10 feet tall fence around the chicken yard

and that possum climbed it.

Up and over it went, one little possum paw after the other.

Then it proceeded to walk along the edge of the fence and climb down the other side. Like it was a spider monkey on an after lunch ramble.

The entire time I am spraying him with a water hose and he's acting like is a sunny day.

I am so angry.

One third of the eggs in the nest gone and the broody hens all upset. I'm not sure if they'll go back to roosting after this.




:( 

*NB I have named him Thomas because he is a mean, evil, BS artist and I don't care for this four legged thief any more than the two legged azz that he's named after.

Boo and hiss ... 


:P times 2.


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