It’s been a long week, I have been keeping the Ring camera open at night while we are watching TV so I can spot the predators killing our chickens, cats and eating our eggs. I had a few issues with this as always. I don’t particularly want to get sprayed by a skunk and our back door is right next to the cat feeding area so if I barge out there guns-a-blazing I am gonna get a face full of spray. This makes it imperative that I actually identify my victim prior to opening the door so I know what to expect. I spotted a raccoon right after it got dark on Tuesday night. I crept out to the back porch and silently as possible racked the action on my pistol to not scare the raccoon away. It really had nothing to fear. I dry fired the pistol as I had not cycled the hammer by gently racking the pistol. I cycled it again quickly but the raccoon was no fool and was beating feet as fast as possible and I never got off a good shot again. It was right there! I dropped the magazine and cleared the chamber when I went back inside the house.
Thirty minutes later I spot a smaller cat eating. As I keep looking at it the cat has a funny shape and color. Turns out it was a huge possum! I do the sneak approach and same thing happens. Luckily, they are a lot slower than a raccoon and I was able to dispatch it. It was headed to the berry patch. Thirty minutes later another huge possum shows up and this one tries to get under the old house. Again, damn pistol dry fired first round. At this point I realize I may need to actually clean the pistol. Honestly, I am unsure of the last time I did it.
But I decided that readiness was going to out trump safety and just kept one in the chamber and turned the safety on. It is hidden so it is not easily accessible. An hour later the raccoon came back and I was able to get off two good shots then had to chase it up the dry creek bed before finally putting it down. I had just counted my chickens before it got dark. The predators have killed over a dozen and they killed our two matching pairs of silkie chickens! Both the grey ones and the brown ones, rooster and hen. Those were the coolest of the new chickens. I think I have around 24 chickens now. This is a stupid problem! We know there is at least one skunk and two more raccoons around the place but I have not seen them on the Ring camera this week. So I will keep watching every night. The four new adult fixed cats we got are still hanging out around the back porch. I don’t know if they will be a deterrent to the predators or not.
Annmarie has been getting ready for her new loom. She took her old project off the inside loom so that we could send that loom home with Sarah. I am told that the rest of the industrial loom is coming up next week and then we can start working on getting it assembled. We are going to use the runner to cover our safes in the living room or else to cover the old wooden fridge in the hallway. It is made out of wool. She tells me she can see all of the mistakes but I cannot.
I was able to finally pickup carcasses to take them up onto the hillside for disposal this weekend. They do smell quite a bit after a few days but the important part is that I discovered one of our neighbors had upgraded and replaced about 50% of the fence that is along our adjoining property lines! This is way cool as it was one that was on our sooner than later upgrade but that was five years from now.
