You see, things have been a bit hectic the last couple days. I've been helping out our daughter with the grand kids and dealing with wild animals that have come to call. Instead of Santa Claus, we've had woodpeckers flying down the chimney. The first one early in the summer rapped on the glass on the stove door and I let him out capturing him in the basement as he flew across the room. You can read more about that adventure in my A Unexpected Visitor Down My Chimney. Another starved in the stove and I found him dead so now I just leave the door open, and like yesterday, capture them when they begin flying about the house.
Busy, I procrastinated my packing until after livestock chores. It was dark before I began and I was merrily chatting with our oldest daughter on the phone as I opened the chicken coop door to gather eggs. Cinders, our barn cat, was at my feet ready to enter and hunt for mice. We both halted sharply in alarm as we stared.
"Darn, darn, darn!" I said excitedly into the phone.
"What!" my daughter replied.
"I have to go. I've got to call your dad to bring a gun."
"What's wrong. Why do you need a gun?"
"Skunk!"
In the corner of the coop, the intruder was sucking on an egg. I kept my light shining on the run door so it wouldn't escape and waited for my rescuer. Later I counted chickens. We were down one and by the new hole in the chicken wire was black feathers galore. Once an animal has a taste for chicken, nothing but death or relocation to miles and miles and miles away will do. Our neighbor found out thirty miles is nothing to a skunk or raccoon. So without a cage or time we opted for the only sure fire method to stop the problem.
Though the car was parked was parked by the milking shed, the perfume from the odiferous black and white kitty coated it's metal frame. Yup, that's what I drove early the next morning to Colorado. Doesn't smell so bad now.
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