Greetings from Salt Spring! For the past couple of weeks, I've been busy helping Mum work on the house and get her garden ready for planting. I've also been helping her with her flock of chickens.
At one point, my parents had quite the chicken operation going. They had 25 chickens producing lovely organic eggs which Mum sold to her neighbours. She'd deliver eggs every day on her morning walk. One neighbour even built a special egg box on the side of the street so Mum wouldn't have to trudge up the driveway.
Alas, the egg business was too good to last. Something has been slowly decimating the flock. She's now down to four hens and a rooster from her original 25 hens and two roosters.
I know how much joy Mum gets from the chickens, so I'm on a mission to rid her of whatever critter is living under the hen house and eating her chickens. I'm a strong Alaskan-ish woman! I can do this!
At first, I thought I'd just seal in the bottom of the hen house.My conscience quickly got the best of me. Subjecting an animal to slow starvation is cruel. I thought of using a firecracker to scare the critter out but then worried about the hen house burning down.
So, I'm going to trap it. A neighbour of ours is bringing over a live trap as I type. We think it might be a raccoon but it could be a mink or an otter. Who knows. I've got some lovely salmon cakes ready to luer the thing into my trap.
Only question remains - what do I do with the critter once its trapped? Stay tuned.
