The Case of the Headless Chicken

Night Marauders or things imagined
The other night I thought I heard a disturbance down in the chicken run. I rushed outside with a flashlight to check on the ladies and although there was some clucking, they all seemed fine and were huddled together, "sleeping".

When I went to check on them in the morning, two were walking around and one was still in the spot they were in the night before. I walked over to discover that not only was she stiff as a board she was missing her head. Before I could do anything, (I didn't really know what to do, mind you) one of the other chickens walked past me and started snacking on her unfortunate friend.
I snatched the corpse and took her outside of the run, while I dug a deep hole.

I was confused.

The chickens had chosen to, instead of roosting up high, to all settle down between the planters in what happened to be the moistest area in the run and it had been pretty cold the night before. Maybe she died of exposure and I was to blame because I hadn't built their coup yet. I felt more than horrible.

Skye however pointed out that the entire head was gone, no bones, no beak, nothing was left of her from the neck up. She then reminded me of the birds bad habit of sticking their heads through the fencing to get a better look around.

That was it then, raccoons were to blame.

Then the next day a second chicken died. These were never that healthy looking of birds, which instead of playing the part of an animal rescue bleeding heart, I should have turned on my heels and left that horrible little pet shop in Sun Valley. So I dug another hole, thoroughly confused. One hen left, Blondie and she looked pretty healthy although she was still pretty funky and had matted feathers and just not that clean, something I wrote off as just the way chickens are, until I saw chickens that were properly cared and housed not jammed into a pen at a "pet shop".

Blondie was lonely and let me know by clucking, a lot. I realized I needed to find a friend for her before the neighbors freaked out about the cluck, cluck, clucking.

But first I was going to finish the chicken coupe. I was actually modifying a little structure, I had built a ways back to hide a big AC unit. Anyway, the work went quickly and soon Blondie had a nice warm home. It's been a couple of weeks since those two passed, I still blame the raccoon for the first bird and I think the other died from a few things, hastened perhaps by the quick cold snap we experienced. Blondie has since cleaned herself up and looks pretty healthy. Even her beak which had been snipped by the "pet shop" has almost grown completely back. As to "friends" for her, well that is another story.
Stay Tuned....

A raccoon could have maybe done such a dastardly deed. Regardless I would be making their evening quarters, more accurately converting and modifying an existing structure. Now I just need to finish