Last Tuesday afternoon a parent came to me to ask what had happened. I had no idea what she was talking about, what had happened about what? She said she saw a dead chicken back in the chicken coop a few minutes earlier. I took off running back to the chicken coop.

Sure enough, laying in the coop was a chicken, to be exact a chicken body with the head several feet away. I ran in to the coop calling for the other chickens. Not a peep was heard, not a chicken was in sight. My heart sank. I frantically started looking under bushes, in the barn, behind the bathtub garden and in the compost bin. Nothing. Again I peered into the barn, I started to turn away when I heard a single peep. Quietly I knelt down and looked underneath the laying box only to see little eyes looking back at me. I began making soft clucking noises and one by one out came all but one of the remaining chickens. Misty Pearl, the only chicken that was not under the box, came staggering out from under the bushes in the coop, looking slightly shocked at what she had seen. Somehow the others had managed to cram their bodies under the laying box and hide. Now the question was what were they hiding from?

Because many of the children visit the chickens on their way home after school, I wanted to move Popcorn before they saw her. I took Popcorn and wrapped her up and put her in a box to await her burial, sure to be a well-attended event the next day. Originally I had looked for signs of holes around the outside of the coop or bent wire showing that a predator had climbed over. There were no signs of anything breaking in. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t locking whatever had done this in with the chickens that night.

As children saw me in the yard they started asking if they could see the chickens and I had to break the news that we were down one chicken, Popcorn. I then immediately included them in helping me solve the mystery of “who done it!” The area where she was found was very clean, there were no signs of a struggle and the neck wound was super clean and straight. That and the fact that all the chickens ran for cover instead of trying to get up high led us to believe “it” came from the sky. But why had “it” not taken the chicken away, or eaten it in the coop?

After checking in with the Lindsey Wildlife Museum and telling them how clean the wound was, they suggested that the most likely culprit was a small raptor, a bird of prey, probably a hawk. Apparently its eyes were bigger than its muscles and it could not carry away its prey. But why had it not eaten Popcorn right there?

We were to find these answers out the next day.

During my 1B garden time on Wednesday, Roger, our master of the grounds, came to me and said that he had seen a hawk in the coop the afternoon before getting ready to eat a chicken. I quickly called the students over to hear the story and to see if our predictions and detective work were correct. Roger went into a wonderful animated account of what happened.

He had come out of the upstairs LS Gym and saw a black and white bird about the same size as one of the chickens just about ready to take a bite out of Popcorn. Roger said both he and the hawk froze and proceeded to glare at each other for the longest moment. Roger finally leaned forward and said “Boo” and the hawk jumped up and flew into one of the pine trees. There it sat waiting for Roger to leave. Roger stood there waiting for the hawk to leave. Finally the hawk gave up and flew away.

We had been right! The most telling signs were the clean wound and the chickens hiding under the hen box. The next day they all remained locked in the barn and their small secure weekend area. Thursday, 3B spent one hour as a class securing plastic netting over the entire top of the outdoor chicken pen. The hawk will not try to get in if it doesn’t think it can make a quick get away. The students nailed, stretched, cut, nailed some more, used quick ties, trimmed and worked as one amazing unit so that the poor chickens could once again enjoy their run.

Even though this is a great solution to keeping the hawks out, we realized that there can also be a price to pay when finding a solution to a problem in nature. By adding the netting over the outside nature area we have now locked out the hummingbirds and other pollinators, possibly including the bees, which were totally confused by the netting. Friday morning I arrived to find a small chickadee flying around the inside of the coop looking for a way out. I had to quietly go in with a scissors and cut a small hole for it to find a way out. We then cut two more holes to let other small birds both in and out. We also planted two more of the hummingbirds favorite flowers on the outside of the coop.

Hopefully all our efforts will pay off. Popcorn was buried in a place of honor, at the front of the garden in a raised bed made by the children specifically to grow sweet peas in. They thought it was pretty perfect that Popcorn would be helping their sweet peas grow. They also made a beautiful alter in the greenhouse to honor Popcorn. The final words on it are “Thank you Popcorn for teaching us so much about how things hunt and how things hide.” As sad as this all could have been, it never went that direction. The children took the death of their pet in stride. They were fascinated at how the crows ran off the hawks but when the crows thinned out the hawks came back. They bring up how smart the chickens were to go in the barn and under the nest box again and again. They continue to look at it from all angles including asking “what did that hawk have for lunch that day since in couldn’t eat Popcorn?”

Great lessons in the garden that you just could not have planned.

Barbara

Posted by RDS | Comments (0)

Posted by RDS | Comments (0)