This howl's for you......

We woke up at 3:00 this morning to the sound of coyotes howling in the woods. It was a very distinct sound-- two or three quick barks followed by a really long high-pitched howl. Bark-bark-hoooooooooooooooooooooooowl. How do they hold that "oooooo" sound so long?

My husband got up and went outside on the upstairs porch..... he said the howls were coming from the woods on our property. I thought of Gatsby being outside, and hoped that he was sleeping in his hiding spot under the deck or at least close enough to it so that he could quickly run there. I've seen Gatsby out in our fields, but he stays relatively close to the house-- I would imagine that his instincts would tell him not to be in a wide-open area unless he was close enough to the trees to quickly climb to a safe high limb. Can a coyote climb a tree?

I also thought of our neighbor's missing chickens as I listened to those howls. Were coyotes able to get into D's coop? Is that why he has lost so many of his hens in the past couple of weeks? Now that our own coop is done ("The Coopacabana," with apologies to Barry Manilow) my husband thought maybe we should test it out. There are three layers of wire in the most vulnerable places of that coop, and his idea was to buy a whole roasting chicken (uncooked) and put it in a tin pan inside the coop.

He thought if we did that chicken-test before we got our real live chickens, we could see if a raccoon or a coyote would be able to get into the coop and eat that raw chicken. Sounded like a good idea, but I told him that we would have every bit of walking wildlife on our property if we left a raw chicken in that coop all night long. And then wouldn't they all be coming back night after night to see what else was being served in The Coopacabana? Right now, no one but us and our neighbors know we have a coop ready for chickens. If we put raw meat into that coop, the entire animal kingdom will know about it within a couple of hours. Not a chance I'd like to take. I would rather trust my husband's coop-building talents and hope for the best once we put the chickens in there.

My cousin F suggested that we hook up a baby-monitor in the coop-- then we would hear any suspicious noises in there during the night. Not a bad idea....... if we heard the chickens clucking when they should be sleeping, we could go out there into the pitch-black night and try squirting the coyote with the garden hose. (Our neighbor would be out there with a rifle, cocked and ready to shoot.)

With non-violence in mind, I say we hook up a CD player in The Coopacabana and have Barry Manilow music playing all day and all night long. I'm betting that the hens would love the music, but the coyotes and bob-cats would be running for the hills. Can you just see the hens, swaying to "I Write The Songs" as they hold their wings up in the air.... we can give them little battery-powered candles to make the scene even more Manilow-authentic.