Chickens are delicate creatures, sometimes dying for no good reason.  Unfortunately, they are also delectable creatures, and find themselves in harm’s way.

Our chickens have been cooped up in their, er, coop for several days now.  We’d lost 1-2 chickens a day last week.  Several of the abductions seem to happen during the middle of day, unusual for us.  Raccoons and possums (technically, Opossums, but that’s beside the point) are nocturnal, and do their worst work if we haven’t locked up the coop by 10 PM.

So that probably leaves a dog.  Not ours — they’re cooped up in the house while we’re gone.  A month ago, though, we had a couple of dogs in the yard; maybe they’ve returned.  We haven’t seen the afternoon striker yet, though, so it is hard to tell.

I’ve put up live no-kill traps, and after 2 apparent escapes and one time catching our out cat, I got a racoon last night.  Adorable little guy.  We’ll give him to someone in the country who doesn’t much like his neighbor, so it should have a happy life elsewhere.

We saw a possum two nights ago, but the dog let it run off somewhere… perhaps we’ll get it next time.  And no ETA on the dog thing, either.  But at least one perp is out!  Thanks, wikipedia, for the image!

Memorial day weekend, we broke the ban on Wal-mart.  Why, you might ask?  Because of Nibbler.

We were in Blytheville, AR over memorial day for the Hudson family reunion.  Lots of food, visiting, long-lost relatives, and, this year, rain.  After the reunion and 2 hours of swimming in an indoor heated pool, we headed out to Pizza Hut for some high-quality food.

We couldn’t find it.  Actually, if I remember right, we set out for a Mazzio’s Pizza, which was long gone, so we stopped at a parking lot to locate (& verify) a Pizza Hut.  But I digress.

It was a heavy downpour, and in a flat place like north-eastern Arkansas, that means something, since there’s nowhere for the water to go.  There was 1-2 inches of water basically standing in the lot, with more coming down every minute.  Suddenly, my wife jumps out of the car, and starts looking underneath.  She then runs around to my door and opens it, asking for beef jerky.

I had a pretty good idea what was going on… an animal.  A minute later she jumps back in the car with a shivering chihuahua, emaciated, missing hair, and with some scabs from the harness it was wearing.

We run back to the hotel, get my wife changed, and head to pretty much the only operating store in the county, Wal-mart, to pick up some basics for the dog.  There, we met an officer who told us to just take care of the dog, animal control was full.  We left some messages with folks down there, and still haven’t heard back.

So, that’s my path to destruction.  The real question:  should I go back?