I am so brilliant a computer user, that after I posted that last blog, I couldn't find my blog again! Therefore, the lack of conclusion. I will try to remember the rest of the horrible spring, but I've put a lot of it out of my mind. To continue:

My orange cat, Ellie May, had discovered she could just fit her paw through the wires in the rabbit cage and pull out a wee babe chick. She also managed to scratch the eye of another (ouch!) and terrorize them all. I managed to save the chick and get her safely back in her cage. This cage would be locked in the workshop away from cats from now on.

Fast forward 6 weeks. The 6 chicks are beautiful - white, black, brown, red, and growing nicely. Time to put them in a separated part of the chicken coop to give them more space and used to outdoor weather. A few days later I come home to find a black chick staggering in my car port. I run out to the coop to see 3 more missing! Drats! I go back to the old stake pounding in their section of the coop to keep out what I thought was a coyote. Next day, 2 more missing. I realize now that the predator is much smaller than a coyote, and borrow my neighbor's safe animal traps (i.e., they trap them but don't slice their paws/tail/face in half). My only surviving chicken is the same Rhode Island Red who was ripped from her safe haven cage by my cat, Ellie May. This chicken has serious post traumatic stress syndrome by now. We placed the trap next to the chicken coop with some lunch meat in it. Two days later, we were shocked to find a large cat in the cage. It looked part domestc, part wild. It's head and paws were huge, but was the size of a Maine Coon. The day after we caught that cat, I see another cat in my neighbor's field that looks like it could be his brother. Therefore, another trap was set, but this time - and I'm trying to remember my reasoning - I set it under my bedroom window. Why? Why? The next day I look out my window and am thrilled to see a trapped animal. I call out to my husband, "I caught it!" He peeks over and says, "Uh, I don't think you caught a cat." The next words are redundant as the odor beginning to permeate my bedroom already warns me of what I caught. "I think it's a skunk." Unfortunately, in my brilliant cage placement, not only was it under my bedroom window, but also next to the dryer vent, which of course, is connected to my dryer in the middle of the house. It provided a speedy conduit.

Watching my husband trying to sneak up on the cage to throw a towel over it was humorous. After doing so, he managed to shove a brick under the door and hop, skip, and leap the heck out of Dodge. After dark, our skunk wandered out of the cage, having lost a day in skunk prison, though that prison was much mroe pauinful for us than him, for sure.

In conclusion, our Rhode Island Red, which my son had named Hueva, was the most neurotic chicken I've ever seen. She followed me around like I was her savior, and took a very long time adapting into the flock. I also bought 2 adult Marans to replace the others I had lost.