I have some sad news to report this morning. We lost one of our chickens over the weekend. I found her yesterday morning when I went out to feed them.

On Saturday night, I was playing WoW in my office until about midnight. (Big surprise, right? Emma says I’m disappointingly predictable.) I heard a loud scratching sound outside from the coop and the chickens started squawking, so I ran outside to see what was happening. As I went out, I heard something scramble over a fence on the side of the yard. The girls looked okay but were clearly freaked out. I looked around the yard a little, then went back to bed. Evidently I missed a small hole in the chickenwire of the coop.

We buried Penelope in the back yard, underneath a lovely new plant. I forget at the moment what it is called, but it has these lovely small, purple flowers. A skyflower, maybe? I can’t remember. I fixed the wire and couldn’t find any other obvious holes.

Sunday night was full of anxiety. Clearly the creature would be back, but when? Emma went to bed early and I was back in my office. About 7:55 I heard a noise and raced outside. Both of the girls were downstairs, standing on one side of the coop, squawking loudly. At first glance, I didn’t see anything. Then, there it was! An opossum! In the coop! It was on the bottom, on the opposite side from the girls. I stared at it for a moment, figuring out what to do, then saw the hose. I turned the nozzle to “jet” and blasted the hell out of the opossum. I had to keep herding it on its side of the coop, keeping it away from the girls. After about a minute, I let up and gave the possum a chance to get away (thinking that I’d find its way in, too). It started to scurry underneath the side of the wire, through a tiny hole between the wire and the ground. Once its head was out, I turned the hose on again and kept spraying it for as long as I could while it ran into the woods. I checked on the girls again, then piled a couple of courses of bricks on the side of the coop, blocking off the hole.

I checked on the girls a couple more times before I went to bed, then slept like complete crap, worrying about them. This morning I didn’t want to go out to feed them, for fear of what I might find, particularly when I couldn’t hear them making their usual early-morning-we’re-starving clucks and whines. Happily, both of the girls were fine and started clucking when they saw me with the food bowl. Phew.

Tonight — and from now on — I think we’ll start closing the girls upstairs at night. The ramp between the levels is on a string so we can pull it up, blocking off the only way up. The top section is pretty secure, I think, especially now that I’ve re-stapled the chickenwire around the sides. The bottom is pretty good, but we’ve now seen repeatedly that critters can get through the smallest of openings.

I don’t think we’re going to replace Penelope, at least not anytime soon. Two chickens is still a good number…if we only had the one, I’d be concerned about her being lonely all day. I’ll get pictures of Penelope’s plant (and the previously-promised garden pictures) up in the next few days.