The Three A.M. Chicken Alarm

Annually, summer predators arrive outside our chicken coop. Three-thirty a.m. is an ungodly hour. It’s not quite morning yet and it’s not really last night anymore. Shrill squawking noises enter the open bedroom window, awakening me from my deepest sleep to slowly permeate my unconsciousness. What the…? 

First thought: Porcupines are fighting, squabbling over what is left of the succulent raspberry canes growing along the orchard fence. No response required because we’ve likely already lost hope for the fall raspberry crop due to porcupine damage. Darn quill pigs!

Reality: It’s a laying hen shrieking! A predator attack on our chickens! This is NOT a drill. It’s time to execute the time-honored farmer vs. predator procedures. I am suddenly wide wake. I can taste the adrenaline surge but with no caffeine, the implementation is clumsy at best.

Step 1: Start yelling out the bedroom window – “Hey!” This reflexive holler into the darkness is actually counter-productive as it stops the attack but also tips-off the unseen predator that they’ve been busted and gives them a head-start on their escape plan.

Step 2: Fumble for pants and shoes; a shirt is optional. Mosquitoes will be a factor no matter what. Grab a fistful of bullets and the trusty old 0.22 rifle and stumble downstairs to the backdoor. Grab the powerful Mag-Lite flashlight which resides at the ready. Weird night sounds often trigger impromptu flashlight safaris.

Step 3: With no caffeine – and worse! – no clue, rush headlong into the pitch dark toward the backyard chicken coop with flashlight bobbing and rifle unloaded, brass clinking in Carhart pockets. At this point, there is often an acute sense of Deja-vu. Not this whole routine again.

Step 4: Start counting chickens inside the coop… 11, 12, 13…   still missing two!  Drawn by the flashlight, a squawking traumatized hen staggers back inside the inner coop where the others remain roosting peacefully. Replace the dazed, prodigal hen back on a high roost. Still missing one more…

Step 5: Secure the perimeter! Walk the outside of the six-foot-high steel woven sheep mesh and chicken wire fence that encloses the orchard fruit trees in our chicken yard. Where is the missing hen? And where is the culprit? How did it gain access to the chicken yard and to the inside of the coop? It’s way too early for rational thought or weighty questions like “what am I doing out here?”

Wait - listen! The distinct sound of scrabbling claws climbing high in a white ash on the stonewall. A raccoon! I sweep the flashlight beam up the trunk but can’t see the telltale green eye-shine to locate the varmint. The mosquitoes descend with a vengeance.

Do you know that at 4:30 a.m. in mid-July, there’s already a tinge of approaching daylight on the eastern horizon? By 4:45, songbirds begin to sing from the forest edge: robins, a phoebe, yellow-throat warbler and a wood thrush. There is no way I am going to get back to sleep now. It was going to be a long, sleep-deprived day at the office.

We turn on the kitchen coffee maker and try to suppress the adrenaline. We watch early morning insomniac news. I am a poor, inept backyard chicken farmer now-turned reluctant hunter. The Elmer Fudd theme song plays in my head- "Ta wocka, ta wocka, ta wocka... a hunting we will go." I'd much prefer to deter predators by improving our fences than to resort to lethal means. But racoons can climb a building to gain the roof and then drop-in to the fenced enclosure! No raccoons were harmed this summer… none yet anyway.

By 5 a.m., I find the last missing hen – she’s alive but rattled having been dragged to the far back of the chicken yard. It must have been a young, smallish raccoon. I put the dazed hen inside the coop and she seems fine after a few days. Since late winter, we’d become lazy about securing the hatch to the fenced orchard. We vow to bar the back door to the coop every evening at dusk.

I recognize we’re NOT real farmers. We’re poultry and garden and forestry hobbyists, mere agricultural enthusiasts. Life on our farm is NOT “kinda laid-back” as John Denver famously crooned.  We try. We fail. We learn. We try again.

The beautiful rural place where we live affords us opportunities to grow and harvest some of our own eggs, vegetables and cordwood. We gain practical experience and learn unexpected lessons: fencing, tractor maintenance, marksmanship. We live closer to the land than many other people do.

The charms of rural living include service to a place we love. We reap a harvest more of wisdom - and sometimes heartbreak - than real caloric sustenance. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill had said: “The price of our freedom is eternal vigilance.”

The price of fresh, homegrown chicken eggs includes the godawful “chicken alarm” shrieking at three a.m.