When we woke up on Monday morning, having gotten home from Sock Summit very very late, we went to check on the chickens and were saddened to discover that they were all gone. The coop door had been ripped off (much the same as it was back in April) and there were no chickens to be found. The feed can had been overturned and mostly emptied, and there were a few piles of feathers around the yard to indicate where the ladies had been picked off. We think of our chickens as pets, so this was upsetting to all of us, and even more so when we took the pictures off the game cam and realized exactly what happened.
First we see a bobcat back on the 19th – the coop is closed, so no harm done.
Next we see the bear. Only a few hours after we left for Portland, he’s here sniffing around…
and then prying open the coop.
What kills me here, is that we then have a bunch of shots over the next few days of chickens around the coop – first a few of them, and then eventually only one.
They weren’t taken out by the bear that first night - the bear just left them unprotected, so that they could be picked off by other animals over the next few days. Possibly the bobcat, or even more likely, the coyotes. So basically, if we had been home to repair the coop, or even had someone checking on them, we could have saved a few. From now on, I will definitely be getting sitters when we leave town – I feel so horrible about this. It is clear from the way they are staying so close to the coop that they are anxious.
Yes, the bear did come back again…
and we probably haven’t seen the last. We’re going to hold off of getting chicks again until next spring, and in the meantime put up some better fortifications. We have our best people on it already.





















































