The Sniper and the Raccoonteur

"Limber up your body. Take a deep breath. Loosen your shoulders. Relax your arms. Make sure the safety's on. Now, close your eyes. Imagine that raccoon. Bring that gun up to your shoulder, doin' all that in a sort of state of zen. Open your eyes. Take the safety off. Take another deep breath..."

It was one of the Loyal boys, from up the road, giving us a rifle refresher course. We'd known it was time for a visit to the Loyals when that raccoon came around. Oh, we didn't know it was a raccoon at first. We had the predator pegged as a fisher-cat, since they're known to kill for sport. SOMEthing had been killing our chickens, biting the heads off, and leaving the bodies behind. SOMEthing had taken, of the last two weeks, four of our precious laying hens and our prettiest bantam rooster. SOMEthing had ripped the heavy metal-and-wood cover off the big wooden brooder box, killed all the month-old chicks and left their bodies strewn about the barn before getting into the hen-pen and smashing all the eggs in the nest boxes. SOMEthing had to be done--and done in.

Right about the time all those chicks were killed, a workman at the house across the road stumbled upon a mama raccoon that had taken up residence inside an unused chimney. A day later, we saw her ourselves--creeping toward our henhouse in broad daylight, bold as brass. (At first we thought the creature was rabid, to be moving in daylight like that, but then we remembered the workman's words and figured it was just a mama being hungry.) We watched her movements carefully, then ran outside to scare her off before she could snuff out another chicken's life. That's when we called the Loyals.

We knew the Loyal boys would have ammo. Many's the clear, golden peaceful afternoon lull shattered by their distant reports. Target practice and hunting are two of their chief joys. By tacit agreement, we don't raise a fuss about their uninvited, unauthorized forays into our "back thirty," and they return the favour with helpful observations: "seen a lot goin' on back there...you know you got three dens full of coyote pups?" "Them loggers are doin' a real nice job on that cut. Your place is lookin' pretty good."

Every town has a houseful or two of Loyals. Nobody's quite sure how many live there at any given time. The dooryard is bedecked with two sodden, elderly armchairs that the trash-haulers never pick up. How the ancient house is still standing, nobody really knows. It's not that the place is trashy or the people don't care--just that their luck runs out often and they're too busy surviving to waste time with a lawnmower or a bucket of paint. As The Piper says, they're just "good people trying to get by."

When that raccoon sauntered up to the henhouse, we knew it was time for a little Loyalist meeting regarding the right to bear arms. We two peace-loving women had seen four fine, fat hens wasted, chicks decapitated and eggs smashed, to say nothing of that poor, lovely little rooster. I've yet to meet any farmwoman who can abide waste, especially when it comes to eggs and hens. We'd reached our tipping point. It was time to borrow and bait a trap, clean the .22 and scare up some ammunition.

It should be mentioned, here, that The School for Wild Girls was still in session. KyedPiper had returned to her island home, but Katya--our Russian-born erstwhile farmhand--was still with us for a few more days. When we returned from visiting the Loyals, it seemed like a good time for another Wild Girl lesson: target practice.

Katya was dubious. "I just don't feel comfortable with guns," she protested, even as she lifted the rifle and peered down the sights. The Piper set up a can--recently emptied of refried beans--on the ground in the middle of a clearing. As per the Loyals' instructions, we marked off the paces on the ground and practiced relaxing, breathing, and doing the "zen hunter thing."

The Piper took the first shot, by way of demonstration. At twenty paces, she planted her feet, took a deep breath, shook the tension from her arms, visualized the raccoon, carefully took aim... and missed. She took another shot and grazed the can. Her next two shots parted the grass in the distance. I tried, too, with similar results. More bullets were loaded into the barrel and the rifle was handed to Katya for her turn. Standing there in thin city-summer clothes and borrowed wellies, she went through the little ritual, taking extra care and time to be sure of her aim, protesting all the while that she didn't like guns and really wasn't too sure about all of this. She pulled the trigger. The bean-can did a little somersault in the air. The Piper and I cheered. "Beginner's luck..." said Katya, still dubious. She took aim again...and punched a second hole through the can, making it dance up and land on its side. We shouted and cheered. She emptied out the shells and put two more bullets in the rifle, aimed a third time, and...hit the can dead center. Then she did it again. Four out of four. "When that raccoon comes back," we said to Katya, "you have the job."

We brought over a borrowed hav-a-hart trap and set it up in the poultry yard near the hen-house door. We baited it with two incubator-warmed eggs and some old bread smeared with peanut butter. As twilight came on, Katya took up her position, rifle at her side, on the stairs next to an open window. She nervously checked and re-checked the safety, a concern of which we heartily approved. When the chickens started their worried, throaty little "something's wrong" noises, we all perked up and started watching.

Sure enough, she was coming our way--smaller than I expected, but clearly determined. She made no secret of her presence as she picked up morsels of the bread we'd scattered in the driveway for the chickens. The chickens were clustering and drifting closer to the house, watching her warily. She followed them, coming closer...closer... there was the sharp crack of the rifle, and a very surprised raccoon hustling out of the way. "DAMN." Katya looked out at the raccoon, looked at us, and then, wide-eyed, down at the rifle in her hands. "I think I winged it." We cheered again, and joked about how lucky our farm was to have its very own Russian sniper. She took it rather well--good thing, as we now had a compelling new reason to avoid upsetting her!

There was no more excitement that night, but in the morning the hav-a-hart trap was empty of eggshells and full of raccoon. (How the eggshells managed to end up outside, almost whole, while the raccoon ended up inside, I'll never know.) There was no sign of the peanut-butter-smeared slice of bread, but the raccoon was curled up, snoozing.

Katya and I knew what we had to do. The trap might be a "hav-a-hart," but we were there to defend our chickens. This was not the time to coo and fuss over fuzzy wee bright-eyed wild things. We were looking into the face of a chicken-killer. This was war.

We went back to the house, put on boots and gloves, and loaded the rifle. When I grabbed the handle and lifted the cage, the dozing creature came to life with a furious snarl. Heedless, we marched it into the woods, a blue smoke-trail of raccoon curses curling and drifting in our wake. When we reached the back ridge, up near the coyote dens, we set the trap down. Katya, tenderhearted but fiercely practical, murmured words of honor and respect for this creature's vital wildness, then took careful aim and dispatched the raccoon with one clean, quick shot to the head. When all was quiet and still, we lifted the trapdoor, set the raccoon on a bed of moss, and left it to the flies and the ravens, Creation's ultimate recyclers.

The next day, Katya flew away, back to her busy urban life in a warmer clime. On Friday, at the farmers' market, I sold a chicken she'd helped me butcher, and within two hours turned the proceeds over to another vendor for six baby chicks. This is how the circle ought to turn, and this is how money ought to travel: from rough hands to smooth hands and back again, as we offer the best gifts of our labour, pay tribute to the land, and greet each other face to face.

Somewhere in the forest, a predator transforms back into food. Somewhere in a henhouse, a new batch of chicks goes hopping and napping and peeping. Here in our farmhouse, we keep an eye out for both, and thank our lucky stars for Loyal and tested friends.

Bird in the Hand

Welcome to Maine's first annual Blog A Bird Rescue Fest! Both our farm and the Castlebay Ceilidh Palace were visited yesterday by bewildered birds. Here's the tale of our own poor wee wanderer:

Perhaps the little blighter followed a fly, one of the few lazily drawing aerial figure-eights in our entryway. Perhaps it was confused by the peep-peep-peep of newly hatched chicks in the upstairs spare room. However it happened, I heard two successive impacts and turned to find a half-stunned nuthatch clinging to the window munton, disturbing the little cloud of ennui and despair that has settled over my seedling trays.

The tomato plants lifted their heads in amazement, as if to say, what, there's a world of life and movement somewhere? (They desperately wanted to be planted outside two weeks ago. When I merely transplanted them into larger containers and returned them inside, they decided to revoke their life-force. I've been trying to tell them it was for their own good, as we're still getting frost warnings, but they don't believe me, even after I dosed them with a hearty splash of fish fertilizer!)

Little Bird clung there for a minute or two, gasping dazedly with open beak. I put on a glove and reached my hand oh-so-slowly in the bird's direction. To my surprise, it didn't flutter or try to get away, but calmly stepped from the window munton right onto my outstretched hand. I walked with it to the open door, but it was still getting its bearings and simply perched on my fingers, blinking back at me. We perched together for a few minutes, there, both marveling at the unusual company we'd come to keep.

It didn't seem right to hold the wee wild one indoors, so--bird still perched calmly on hand--I stepped across the threshold, down the steps, and towards the blooming pear tree in the orchard. Nuthatches aren't known so much for branch-sitting as they are for trunk-hopping, and their preferred habit is to move downwards, headfirst. I stood a few feet from the tree, pondering the best method of transfer, when the bird finally found its bearings, stirred, and flew, alighting on the trunk about seven feet up. It hopped and skittered a bit, testing its feet and watching me with an odd mix of interest and unconcern. Then it flew up into the branches, amidst the faintly fragrant blossoms, and uttered a series of buzzing little notes, as if to say, "Right, then, all's well that ends well, er...as you were. Let us both be moving along." I paused just long enough to document the day, then respectfully departed.


What a lovely, odd visit. It was kind of the nuthatch to endure my assistance with grace--it restored a pleasant light to an otherwise frustrating avian-involvement day. You see, for the last few days, we've had chicken eggs hatching in the incubator, and something went mystifyingly, dreadfully wrong about halfway through the hatch. The first seven birds came through fine. The temperature and humidity seemed right where they ought to be, and several additional eggs were "pipping" or showing signs of activity. The next chick that hatched out seemed to labour a bit too long, and it looked woeful when it finally hatched. It didn't live long enough to join the others in the warm little paper-lined box next to the incubator. After that, the pipping eggs just...stopped. I waited and watched through the little plastic window. Usually they'll rock a bit, peep now and then inside the egg, and then exert themselves in shell-pecking and struggling for a furious second or two before resting up for the next urgent effort. Instead, the eggs--four of which already bore tiny, newly-pecked holes in their shells--gradually stopped rocking, quieted and became still.

I'm still not sure of the culprit--did I not turn them often enough as they were developing? Was there a sudden dip in temperature in the middle of the night, perhaps, or did the humidity drop below the preferred level? Well, there's nothing left to do but clean out the defunct eggs, scrub the incubator down, and try again--maybe with a fancy digital thermometer/hygrometer this time around.

At least we have seven beautiful chicks to show for our efforts. Only one is clearly a hen (they have darker coloring than the Golden Comet males, even as chicks), so it looks like most of these are destined to become Sunday Suppers: plump little roasters lads who will live out their short but happy lives in an outdoor pen in the front yard. I wish I'd had more hens, as there are customers waiting. I'll have to call them and let them know they'll have three more weeks to wait. Now, I'd best be bustling off to the barn to collect today's eggs and start all over again!

To show you how well-suited our new hatchlings are to this Celtic Homestead, I've posted a video taken during the hatching. It's a bit long and rather blurry, like most birthings, but you can clearly see the egg rocking in time to the bagpipe recording that was playing downstairs!

Egging Us On

Today, the eggs go in. Now, that may sound like a reversal of the natural order of things, but we're giving nature a little, um, assistance.

Our Old English Game Bantams are fine little chickens. They're great for comic relief, insect patrol, and the occasional adorably-wee pale brown eggs. Nobody keeps bantams specifically for egg or meat production unless they have a very, very small appetite. What bantam hens are best at is brooding.

When a hen goes broody, her mind and body tell her it's time to hatch some eggs. She will sit and sit and sit on her clutch of eggs--or any other hen's clutch of eggs--or a bunch of wooden eggs--or perhaps even a few egg-shaped rocks. Bantams are famous for their brooding abilities. Many farmers and poultry fanciers will keep a few bantam hens on hand to hatch the eggs of other species, such as guinea fowl, that go broody only rarely or poorly if at all.

Once the chicks--or, in the case of guinea fowl, keets--are hatched out, bantam hens tend to be fairly reliable at mothering. They'll protect and fuss over the baby birds, teach them basic survival skills, even keep them out of wet grass and distract potential predators. (I say FAIRLY reliable because one of our bantams led her entire brood repeatedly into wet grass last year, and we lost four chicks. Now we've learned to keep the chicks and broody hens in the barn for a few more days after hatching.

Well, the bantams will be getting broody soon, but they're not broody yet, and we have folks asking if we'll have chicks for sale. Last night, we went into the Black Hole--I mean, the storage room--and brought out the egg incubator. With a soft brush and a bleach-water sponge, I dusted it off and cleaned it inside and out. Tonight we'll plug it in and check the thermometer a few times until the temperature seems stable. Then it will be time to add the eggs.

Now, some incubators are fancy. They have automatic turners and forced-air fans and all manner of special gear to create the ultimate hatching environment. All those extras cost money, so we have a basic "still-air" model without the turners. That means that we have to be the mama hens, turning the eggs a few times a day so that the yolks don't get stuck in one position and prevent the chicks from developing correctly. Each egg will be marked with a faintly-penciled "x" on one side. Each time we open the incubator and turn the eggs, they will gently be rotated: x-side up, then x-side down. As you can imagine, it's a pretty x-siding process.

This morning I dispatched two more meat birds. Tomorrow morning we start incubating eggs. I'm having homegrown ham and carrot soup (from the freezer) for lunch. This afternoon, I aim to get the first batch of this year's carrot and beet seeds into the ground. Yep, must be Spring on the farm!

Rusticity Report: December 2008

Indoor weather report as of 6:30 AM: 31 degrees. (Let me repeat: that's INDOORS.)
Status of running water in house pipes: none.
Status of window view at all windows: opaque & crystalline.
Status of fire in woodstove: out, but with live coals remaining.
Status of farm dog: eager to pee, reluctant to do so outdoors.
Farmhouse toilet seat report: chance of frostbite in awkward areas.
Farmhouse breakfast: jasmine rice pudding, made with leftover rice, leftover baked squash & apples, eggs from our hens, milk from Winter Hill Farm, and a dash of ginger.

Now, for the outdoor report: 2 degrees above zero
Status of field hydrants: handle stiff but functional, water at full force.
Status of view: crystal-clear and sparkling, if eyelashes don't freeze.
Cows: contentedly chewing on two cartloads of "haylage" (hay sauerkraut). New trough de-icer plugged in to new outdoor outlet on woodshop/cottage, seems to be working.
Chickens: devouring locally-sourced grains sprinkled with grit & dried seaweed. Water frozen; dispenser brought in to thaw on newly-lit woodstove.
Pigs: relocated to local butcher for tomorrow's "date with destiny."

Now, at nine o'clock in the morning, I am thinking about the house lumber that will be delivered later today--our last major delivery except for the flooring. I am thinking about the puppy, now napping in her kennel, who warmed my hands by shoving her thick-coated wiggly body impatiently under the desk, lifting my hands away from the keyboard to pet and stroke and twine cosily in her black and white fur. I am thinking about the four-hour shift I must work at a shop in another town to help pay for the lumber, the puppy's food, and everything else that sustains this farm. I am thinking about the business plan due in my class tomorrow, the lumber that needs priming and sanding, the plumber who *might* show up later this week and help us get into the cottage by Christmas... and now, having taken the time to write all this, I am thinking I might be late for work!