About a month ago I found one of my hens alive, but torn up with gashes on her back and all her feathers missing. I put her in the bunny hutch with Travis and cleaned her wounds as best I could. She lived on for about 10 days before finally succumbing to her wounds. Shortly afterwards, I found two more hens with the same type of wounds, but these two were dead already. I blamed the dogs for those, specifically Thor and Xena who had been out at the time of the deaths.
I caught the true killer in the act yesterday evening.
Major Tom had a hen pinned under his feet, trying to mate with her. But she was so small that he couldn’t complete the act, so he just kept doing his mating dance on her back. That is, until I kicked the crap out of him.
I put the poor hen out of her misery since she was so torn up that I could see her heart beating. I couldn’t believe the poor thing was still walking around!
I couldn’t find the hatchet that Glenn usually uses to butcher the chickens, and wasn’t sure I’d be able to catch Tom, hold him down, and chop his head off by myself. So I pulled out Old Faithful, filled her with shells, and blew Tom to pieces. I did this with a maniacal grin on my face and saying “be verwy quiet, I’m hunting turkey!” in my best Elmer Fudd voice.
Junior and Stride were in the yard grazing when the gun went off. Junior took off up the driveway and crossed the road into the neighbor’s pasture. Stride never even looked up. Thor and Xena took off behind the house, and Lucky came running to me to see what I had shot. Silly kitten.
I just hope I don’t have to shoot anything else for a long time. But at least I’m becoming a pretty good shot and no longer fear the recoil. Silver lining… :)
