Davy, Davy Crockett

I like to come home to guns on my dining room table.

Yesterday we lost three chickens. We knew they were dead because of the large amount of feathers scattered inside the barn, along the ladder, and up to the hay loft. Art went hunting today, gun in hand, and found a very large, very full, three legged raccoon. Needless to say the raccoon's chicken hunting days are no more.

I'm sure many people will find this appalling and will offer suggestions of live traps but it's kind of like catching a live mouse in your house, then setting it free outside your front door- it will keep coming back because it knows where the food is. We've lost nine chickens to this raccoon (at least, I'm assuming it's the same raccoon); we started out with fifteen and now we're down to six. It's ok because I don't need more than six eggs a day, but I do wish he'd gone after the rooster as he is quite plump and offers no redeeming quality as an egg producer or even protector of the flock.

Art was concerned about my writing about his raccoon hunting thinking he could get fined, but I assured him that this raccoon was a destroying my property and therefore inside the boundries of the law.