Sad Day for Chicken Little

I've been avoiding the blog lately...my most favorite little chookie was killed by a coyote on January 15th.  I never thought in a hundred years that I would get attached to a CHICKEN....a CHICKEN of all things!  C'mon!  But I did...so I spent a few days moping around and feeling sorry for myself.  Maybe I'll feel better when I get another Chicken Little in the spring.  Like when Trenton lost Tiger, he named his next one New Tiger, and the next one, Brand New Tiger...and so on. I think that's what I'll have to do to keep Chicken Little's legacy going.

Here's the sad story ~
Tay was walking the pasture near the compost pile (the chookies favorite spot, besides the kitchen door where they love to wait for scraps) and came upon a pile of black and white feathers.  :(  When he came inside and told me, I secretly hoped it was KFC and not my Chicken Little.  But when I checked in on the girls, she was the one missing.  We tracked the feathers to the tree line and then it was like she vanished.  So sad.  I hate coyotes.  We needed to do something.

My husband being the weapon loving man that he is decided we needed a different rifle for the job.  His were too big and would blow the thing to pieces.  So he went out and bought one that night.  Came home with a shiny new 17 HMR,  just my size he said.  He'd been wanting to buy something smaller for me so this was his perfect excuse.  He names all of his guns ladies, so I thought mine could be a man.  So I named him Batboy (Battalion slang for Rangers).

We waited for the Coyote to come back and yesterday was the day.  I was upstairs playing wordsbypost with my mom on our iPhones when I learned the sound of a chicken about to be eaten.  So sad!  I ran to the window and saw the coyote right outside the pigs fence, slowly creeping up to the chickens, who had run for cover under the trampoline.  Batboy wasn't by the window and I didn't want to scream for Taylor and scare the coyote away so I kind of screamed for him under my breath if that's possible.  He grabbed the gun and told me to slowly open the window because that's how I scared the darn thing off last time.  But the coyote heard us and ran off behind the trees, up into the pasture.  Still in clear sight but paused right near my horses (which were terrified)!  I yelled and told him not to take the shot so close to them, and he gave me this look like, "woman, do you know me at all?"  Then took aim and BOOM!  He got him dead center but the bullet isn't big enough to drop him dead, so he ran off into the trees.  We tracked him and found where he enters through the upper pasture because there were a bunch of - black and white feathers - right on his trail.  Hopefully he died quickly because even though he killed my favorite chicken, I don't want any animal to suffer.

Don't worry Chicken Little, we got the big bad wolf for you.