"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." - George Eliot

I don't usually post mid-morning, but I expect that by the time we get home from a day on the coast I won't feel like doing much of anything. Yeah, believe it or not, I actually put some brain work into these things.

And there's news to report to those of you not on Facebook (both of you) where the rest have probably already seen it:

This is all that's left of one of our two Rhode Island Red crosses.
Shortly after dinner we heard the chickens making a LOT of noise. Hens do an entertaining chortling after they've laid an egg - a kind of boast on their accomplishment - and Lucky sometimes duplicates it. (A man will often take credit for a woman's work.) But this was too much noise coming from too many chickens for too long, so Pam got up to see what had them so exercised.

A couple of minutes later I heard her yelling that one of the chickens was "lost." OK, a couple of them often wander off from the rest of the flock, but I can usually find them in one of their favorite spots to dust or scrape for bugs, so I went out to look for the prodigal fowl. Pam could see what I was doing and said, "No, I mean DEAD."

Those feathers and another pile about the same size 10' away is all that remains. It's between the rhubarb plants and the creek. No bones, no head, no innards, just feathers. Nothing to do but snap a pic for posterity and get the rest of the very flustered birds back into the pen. Where they will stay. No more free range chickens on Baker Rd.!

There's a Facebook page for the community, so I posted this pic and asked what they thought was responsible. The most common responses: coyote or hawk. If it was the former I'd expect pieces, and we've seen some very large hawks overhead so I think that's more likely, and would account for the absence of carcass parts.

We started out with 8 pullets and one rooster. The two Buff Orpingtons died early on and I think they came from the hatchery with some kind of parasite or.... Now we've lost a Red, especially disappointing because they're such good layers. So now we're down to five hens and one rooster who is still Lucky but a bit of a disappointment in the Protect the Flock department.

Pam was/is pretty upset, but she's a softy. I'm more the farmer and understand it's part of the course of things. What lives, dies. It bothers her from an emotional standpoint and me from a production standpoint. For her, Louise is gone (yeah, she named them), for me, that's about 5 eggs a week gone.

Maybe this is good practice for her in the event we get goats for meat.
Never name an animal you plan to eat.