Not a Creature Was Stirring... Except for the POSSUM!

I hope everyone out there had a merry Christmas... we did. And to commemorate the occasion we took a "family portrait" by the tree.... complete with Rambo! Of COURSE we had to have a chicken in it! Come on now... who are you talking to here? :)

ANYWAY! I haven't written in a little while, so I have some catching up to do! After what happened last night I really have something to write about!

Last night around 11:00 I was standing out by the back door having a late night smoke in the thunderstorm that had just rolled in. It was raining pretty hard, but it was surprisingly warm out there. All of a sudden I heard a ruckus coming from the coop. The roosters in the bachelor pen were making scared noises. I ran out back (as fast as I could through the mud in my boyfriends ginormous shoes) and shined my flashlight into the pen. There on top of the hut was a HUGE POSSUM!! I hurried as fast as I could back to the house and told my MIL what was going on and to get the gun. I grabbed my little .22 pistol and my .22 rifle, she grabbed her revolver. (You'd think we were going to fight a war or something). We hurried back down there and I tried to balance my flashlight (which was really a little LED clip on book light - but it was the only light I had with good batteries!) and tried to shoot the damn thing. I unloaded my .22 pistol on him - I hit him, but I couldn't get a head shot so he was just getting pissed off. Then I grabbed the revolver and tried again. It was really hard to see so again, I missed his head. The darn thing only had 3 bullets in it... so I moved on to my rifle. FINALLY I got a shot to his head and he started dying in earnest. It seemed like it took forever to do this and my hands were shaking. This is the first thing I've shot other than targets. I don't feel bad though. Napoleons little brother was found dead a few weeks ago and I think this was the culprit. The ironic thing is, the boys pen is the only one that still has netting over it... I guess that's only good to keep the hawks out!

*Sigh*

In other news I had built a new rabbit hutch to hold the boys and to accommodate whatever future breeders we decide to keep. It came out nicely! I'll post pictures soon. I found some old wooden doors someone was giving away in the front yard of an old house that was being refurbished. They made really nice sides to the hutch. I even used some old tin sheeting to made a poop-slide so I could eventually put some grow out cages in a lower level beneath the upper breeder cages.

Right now the three boy bunnies are in it growing up. They are just about 12 weeks old now and I think their time has come. We are keeping the one female to breed next year (I named her Joplin because Chastity just wouldn't have worked with her job description), but the boys really don't have a use other than as meat. It's sad... they are really sweet, but that's why I "made" them so I need to just toughen up and take care of business.

My neighbor shot a nice doe last week and saved me the hide - so I'm trying to tan it myself. With the weather the way it's been and with my not being able to keep the hide inside I'm not sure how well it will come out. It's in the back near the coop with a makeshift tin roof over it. It might not make it... but I want to try!

Well, I'm still coming down from the adrenaline... that bastard (excuse me) possum killed one of my boys... I try to show respect for animals, especially in death... but I just wish this one had minded his own business and gone and raided someones garbage can like a good self respecting possum. Leave my chickens alone!!