The Chicken Bandit

For the last several weeks, we’ve had an ongoing wildlife vs livestock drama going on. A raccoon discovered chicken tastes good and keeps coming back for more evening after evening after evening.

This has not been a good year for our poor chicken flock! First we lost half the flock to a couple of coyotes climbing the 6 foot chain-link fence, and now we have a 1-2 year old raccoon decide that climbing said fence to grab a chicken for dinner is ay-okay.

It started several weeks ago. I heard the chickens going nuts. It was cloudy and about an hour before they would go into their coops. My room is downstairs and I can see the chicken area from my room and they were flying and jumping around, so I KNEW a predator was in there. I ran out and slipped on shoes and reached the pen in time to see a raccoon go up a tree with a black silkie hen (DAMMIT!) and as it climbed, I saw the chicken struggling until the raccoon bit through it’s neck. I was so pissed! Mike and Cat came out and watched the little jerk contentedly munching away. Cat had to go to bed, but I stayed outside until the rest of the chickens were safely locked inside their coops, because the coon could just come back down the tree and get another one!

The next evening it was pouring rain and the flock started squawking. This time, Mike and Cat arrived when I did, but once more, we made it in time to see the raccoon grab a cockerel (thankfully, not another hen) and go up a tree to eat a meal yet again. Cat went and got her bow and arrow this time and almost got the sucker a couple of time, so he just went higher and higher up in the tree.

Since then, it’s been evening after evening of being hyper-alert between 7 pm and 9:30 pm (or until the chickens are locked inside their coops). I know I can’t make it in time from my room, so either Cat or myself are posted outside, on the deck or I walk around the driveway for exercise, because as soon as the chickens start making nervous calls (even before being alarmed) I can stop the raccoon. I’ve chased it away over a dozen times now, but he (or she) just keeps coming back. Cat has nearly killed it with an arrow, but she can only lay in ambush on nights where she’s not going to bed by 7 pm, which is only 2 nights a week because she has an absurdly early bedtime and morning wake up. I’ve chased that bandit on foot, I’ve tried to thwack it with a quarterstaff-like madrone staff (REALLY hard wood!) thrown rocks and bricks, and screamed like a banshee… all to no avail. It only REALLY ran like it was seriously scared when some rocks made contact, until then, it practically laughed at the slow human!

Cat plans to get a live trap, but it will have to be next month, because we’re out of extra funds. However, if we release it, it will be FAR away from here– like on the mainland! Cat might decide to just off the bugger anyways. Raccoons aren’t endangered, if anything, they are overpopulated due to humans feeding them (accidentally or on purpose) and once they learn a bad behavior, they’re never cured of it. CLEARLY.

I’m having a very hard time on days where I’m flaring and just… can’t do it. Luckily, Cat had vacation the first week of July and covered me, but now–? I’m hoping that my treating my condition will ease the fatigue and allow me to be awake, alert, and able to run short distances until Cat kills or traps the son-of-a-bitch. Until then, I’m trying to keep us from losing any more of our hens, although most of the extra roosters need to be culled at this point anyways. But the racoon takes whatever he catches first, so… I have to stand guard.

Le sigh!