Kid Tracks
The Almeida family has moved to Raising Maine. They still will be exploring Maine's outdoors, creating crafty projects and casting chickens in homemade videos. But you will see it all in their new blog.

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May 24, 2006
A dog attack

We returned home this afternoon to discover a mean and growling dog in our yard. I got out of the car to shoo it away and the dog continued to growl and look kinda scary. I wasn't sure which neighbor's dog it was (and I wasn't too keen on getting a closer to read his tag). But after a minute or so he ran off down the street and G. bounded out of the car (I told them not to get out until the dog was gone) in a panic about the chickens.

"Where are the chickens mommy!?!"

There weren't any around which I hadn't initially noticed so I wondered too.

After some scouting, we found the remnants from one chicken (very unpleasant for me let alone the kids) and only 3 clucking around the coop. We have 31 in total so there were a lot unaccounted for.

chickentragedy3_blog.jpg
The feather trail is a tell-tale sign of a dead chicken nearby.

We did a head count about an hour later as L. fed them some pineapple (yeah, I didn't know they liked that either). All but 2 were accounted for, both very small bantams - "Napoleon" (a rooster who lived up to his name daily so we think maybe he'll turn up later) and "Napoleon's Sister, Annika." And as if it wasn't obvious, every chicken in the coop has a name and the girls insist they can tell them all apart. And to be honest, I don't doubt it. They spend a lot of time loving their pets.

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As for the ducks, they're free range again and survived the dog attack.

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I think I understand where that saying "Lucky Duck" came from now.

Posted by Wendy Almeida at 03:23 PM

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Comments

What a horrible experience! I hope G and L are okay. I just discovered today that our chickens can fly higher than I thought they'd be able to :). It's time to build a taller coop as free range all of the time isn't practical for our "city chicks" :), and my nieghbors have already intimated that while it's okay for me to have chickens, they'd prefer the chickens stay in MY yard :).

Posted by Wendy B.
May 24, 2006 10:21 PM

The girls are doing OK especially since Napoleon and Napoleon's Sister Annika turned up last night so we only lost 1 chicken to the dog.

Posted by Wendy Almeida
May 25, 2006 08:21 AM

My family of school aged and other children could never manage a crowd of chickens, so we settled with a Rooster. Or 3, actually, but at separate times. Our last little man, Buddy, sauntered off with the wandering troupe of wild turkeys that pass our house in the wilds daily, and was seen no more.
Goodbye Buddy. He had a rather nasty crow, however, and was only missed during the day, not nightly during his caaw-like late night serenades. Our dogs kept neighboring canines who might assault the bird at bay. When he left for the last time (assume here he was fisher/coyote food) we spoke of his being in love with one of the turkey's and running away with her.

Posted by Pat
May 26, 2006 08:39 AM

Oh, I'd like to think the rooster found love and ran away with the turkey. I like happy endings even if it's more fiction than reality :-)

And I agree that rooster's late night serenades can be a drag. People always think they just crow at day break - not so!

Posted by Wendy Almeida
May 26, 2006 08:44 AM

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