Rarely a Dull Moment

As many may recall, the past week greeted us with many wildlife adventures.

We noticed the new rabbit hutch was having visitors that destroyed the bags of sunflower seeds we have in a cage for the bunnies' consumption; stealing as many as they could through the wire bars.

We then had more visitors knocking over the chicken run fencing and getting into the chicken feed.

We quickly discovered it was a young black bear.

YIKES!

That same night a skunk snuck it's way into our fenced yard and sprayed our poor pup, Titus.

UG!

After a call to the game warden resulted in no action, I made the decision to move the younger hens into the older hens enclosed chicken run and coop.  The larger coop is much more predator proof.  I was initially waiting to move the younger hens until one of two things happened.  1) I was able to expand the current coop to make it larger to fit more birds or 2) We butchered the older hens that were no longer laying eggs.

Neither event had happened, but... I was fearful that our young hens would be a snack for our visiting black bear if I didn't take action right away.

The next night we had a reprieve and nothing was bothered.  Figures - now that we had made the hard introduction of all the chickens, nothing came to bother our little set up.

The day after that -- not so much.

My assumption was the bear had returned to get more chicken feed and possibly some chickens.

But... the camera showed a different culprit this time.

I guess you could say it was still a bear.  I believe this little guy is part of the bear family, but not quite the threat that a big black bear poses.  Just as destructive, though.

When I went out to check the camera, once again, the fencing around the little chicken coop had been toppled.  This time it wasn't disassembled though.  Simply knocked to the ground.

I was so very glad I had moved the young chickens into the larger coop a couple days prior, as this particular visitor had managed to open the nesting box door where the hens always slept at night when abiding in the small coop.  Had we not moved them - they could have all been killed by our unwelcome guest.

Here he is.  Also posing for his picture before continuing his mission of destruction and feeding.

Posing for his pictures before climbing up and over the fence.

Climbing back out of the fenced area.
I guess he knocked the fence over as he worked on getting the door of the nesting box opened.

I guess I made the best decision when we plopped our young chickens into the older hens coop.  Each night they are all tucked away in a mostly predator proof house where they sleep safe and sound.  Of course, if that young bear brings his friends, there's no guarantee our little coop will stand a chance, but... for now... all is well on our mini-mountian-menagerie and all of our domestic critters seem to be safe from the wild critters.

As our cousin said on my Facebook post - Never a dull moment.

Rarely anyway.