I'm back in the saddle again so to speak, we're finally in the egg business after a fox devasted our flock. I got 8 hens from Coleen, the mother of one of Andrew's friends. It's wonderful to enjoy "homegrown" eggs again. I was so in the habit of having my own eggs that I kept forgetting to buy eggs at the store. I'd begin to make muffins and realize I didn't have eggs. Shoot! I figured out how to make a lot of things sin huevos but it wasn't as good.
Our little farm is growing. We added four ducklings to our fowl family and three turkeys. (What's the baby name for turkey, turklette?)
The trouble is...the fox. I was reinforcing the chicken coop yesterday, putting up more chicken wire, my trusty Border Collie at my side. Suddenly he looked up, barked and tore after a fox. It was broad daylight, eleven in the morning, and he was heading for the "snack bar", the chicken coop! Toby chased him all the way to his den but he got way ahead of me and I couldn't find it.
We have tried trapping this fox but he is too...well, sly. "Sly like a fox" has taken on new meaning for me. We had a trapper who works for Wildlife come and set a snare where we think the fox is climbing under the fence. Instead of catching the fox we caught a racoon one night, a cat the next. When the cat died from exposure my neighbor and I didn't have the heart to use the noose-like trap anymore. We're back to using a more humane cage trap where there's no injury or death in the process.
The cat's death was very traumatic. Rob and I cut the wire cable but couldn't get it off from around his waist. We called the trapper and he tried to explain how to do it, all the while hurrying up the interstate at my desparate request. We had the cat lying on our dining room table over newspapers, a surgery table of sorts. He was breathing very shallowly and I became quite alarmed. I thought he was my neighbor's cat, Tommy. I could just imagine the phone call, "John, we accidently killed your cat." When the trapper arrived he got the noose off very quickly but sadlly, the cat was already dead. We felt so bad! I found out later that the cat was not my neighbor's thankfully.
We had a little funeral, burying him in our pasture with the chicken Saphira and the baby lambs. Our pasture has become quite the cemetery! Sam played taps on the trombone and I offered the eulogy. Matthew picked some wildflowers to put on its grave.
Morbid as it sounds, I took some posthumous pictures as well just in case I see "Missing Cat" signs all over town with photos. If it looks like him, I can show them the pictures and they can identify him. I can assure them that he had a decent burial. I feel so bad that I inadvertantly caused his death that I'm going to donate cat food to the animal shelter for "penance."
