Missing hens.

I was talking to one of our neighbors down the hill and she told me that our neighbor D (proud owner of 16 hens) has only two hens left right now. Two? As in one, two? What happened to the other fourteen hens? She said that D thinks it was a raccoon or coyote, or maybe some of the circling hawks or vultures managed to fly away with his hens.

Either way, he's going to set up a raccoon trap near his coop and see if he catches anything. I pity that poor raccoon.... I'm sure D is very upset. He was very protective of his hens, and very thankful that they managed to keep the insect population around his house under control. D had told us that when he first moved in over there years ago, he spent a small fortune on landscaping around the house-- shrubs and bushes, palm trees and flowers. Within two weeks' time, the grasshoppers had eaten every last leaf on every last plant. Gone. Stripped. Nothing left. Not even one thin blade on the sago palms.

Which is why he got the chickens in the first place-- to eat all the crawling, flying, pesty insects. His landscaping is lush and beautiful. But now.... he has just two hens left. I told that story to my husband and I could see his mind at work-- no doubt, he will be putting up yet another layer of chicken wire, held in place by not just staples or tacks, but probably iron hooks studded in cement. "I'll be damned if some raccoon is going to run off with my chickens......"

We didn't get the "free" chickens the other night. Someone else had found the ad, called up the people with those hens, and off they went, to another good home. If all goes well, and the work on our coop is done this week, we will be hen-shopping over the weekend or the beginning of next week. And the name for our coop--- It will be "The Coopacabana," of course..... with apologies to Barry Manilow. (At the Coopa.... Coopacabana.... --maybe we should name one of the chickens Lola.)


The goats continue to escape from the neighbor's pasture across the road from our hill..... today there were seven goats in B and K's backyard. I know that because I was in her kitchen at the time, and we were standing there talking and all of a sudden, we see two goats looking in at us through her back door and one goat walking on her daughter's trampoline. The other goats were having lunch in her husband's vegetable garden.

We walked out on her patio and started making noise with the first things we picked up-- her daughter's plastic toys, a stick that had fallen from a tree...... the goats started running out of her yard and back to their own hill... except for the trampoline-goat. That one just stood there looking at us. We didn't get too close to him--- if he's brazen enough to get up on that trampoline, and brazen enough to stand there facing us with all the noise we were making, then we thought it would be better to just leave him be.

The neighbor with all the goats had been working on that fence last week. Either he keeps missing the spot where the goats are escaping, or the goats are just finding new ways to get out. And they keep getting out because they, along with the horses over there, have eaten every last bit of grass and hay on their fields. The owner needs to just buy them more hay. Either more hay, or a trampoline.