Today is Monday. On Friday, t wo of our beautiful silkies were killed. We know not the culprit, but we suspect our fatuous cat Moriarity. One male was left dead in the pen. One female was gone completely.
Hawks or racoons would have mauled, scraped or eaten the birds. The male whose body remained looked only to have had its neck broken. Feathers peppered the pen. The two remaining birds seemed frightened, more skittish than normal.
We heightened our fence specifically to avoid what we felt was the main threat to our birds, dogs. A dog could not have gotten into the pen. Nor would his work have been so clean.
Having raised the loveable innocents from days-old-hood, i had grown terribly attached to them. I feel as though i somehow failed them in this. I had done what i thought was enough to keep them safe, but i was wrong.
We hadn’t considered our cat a threat because we thought the birds were too big to be of interest to him.
And granted, our cat it may not have been.
But the attacks were not in the dead of night. They were in the day or just before dark.
I will get more chickens. I will try harder next time.
