Farm 1, predators 0

Can you believe the audacity of the predators?  Who tells them my chicken door is broken?  Do they send out an emergency signal?  Every time it breaks they are here.  Who loves chicken?  "Everyone loves chicken!" (rule #2 at our house).    Last week Zeke asked to go outside just after we finished dinner.  I let him out to run around, usually this means terrorizing the cats.  If a cat runs he tears after it.  The smart cats just ignore him or stand still.  He hates it!  He will just lay down on the ground and stare at them in an attempt to get them to run.  It works on all but three cats, they just pretend he is a ghost.  He does all this in silence. 

I was doing the dinner dishes before work and Zeke started to just raise a raucous outside the back door.  Last time he did this it was a possum that got away while I was getting a pistol.  This time I ran for the pistol first thing and looked out on the back porch.  Zeke had a huge possum cornered up against the back door.  The thing was larger than a big cat.  I stepped out with the varmit killer ready (Walther P-22 with laser sights) and it moved off the porch, perfect for shooting it except Zeke would not leave it alone!  He kept running in and trying to grab it by the head.  I kept hollering at him to get back so I could shoot it.  It got ten feet away near the back gate before Zeke cleared off.  Once I started shooting Zeke high tailed it to the front of the house to hide under the porch.  He does not like guns of any kind.  The little varmit hid under the back bridge between two pieces of concrete.  I could hear it hissing at me as I was standing on the bridge but could not see it between the slats of the bridge.  I forgot to grab a flashlight.  Sarah came running out the back door wanting to know what I was shooting at.  I sent her off to get a flashlight. 

With the flashlight delivered by the child, I started trying to peer between the boards into the 1/2 inch gap for the chicken killer.  I finally spotted it and started shooting between the boards.  I was successful and dispatched the fiend with only ten rounds expended.  At the current price of rounds that is $0.40.  Definitely better than losing a chicken and its lifetime value of $100 worth of eggs.  My ears rang for hours afterwards!  I must need some ear muffs beside the pistol. 

Sheep are the little brown blips on the hillside.  There are even a bunch of babies.  Everyone enjoying the sun.