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You know how some people say to “leave it on the field” or “leave it on the dance floor?”  My chicken left it “in the yard.”  Her chicken butt, that is.

If you’ve never been awakened by a screaming 13 yr old at 5:30 AM, “A fox is killing the chickens!” You haven’t lived.  That’s an adrenaline rush.

Wait, he started with, “Mama, Papa, I need your help!!!”  We imagined burglars, children not breathing, and head wounds.  Nope.  It was a fox.

Which, once we regrouped, was important.  But, an open door and a light in the kitchen discouraged the bad guy.

Of course, I’m pretty soulless, “How many chickens do we have left? Anyone remember me saying that we HAD to lock the hen house?” Yep.  I totally lead with, “I TOLD YOU SO.”

Just FYI, this chicken lived.  The one from a week ago didn’t.  🙁

Anyway, I have one lesson to share, which I have shared over and over.  A free-range chicken is a DEAD chicken. Always has been true, always will be.  They are delicious.  The universe knows it’s true.

In hobby farming, everything is fine until the predators realize you have KFC in the backyard.  It happened with squash; it happened with chickens; it happened with the goats.  Years without parasites or predators, but once they find you…all that organic, I-don’t-need-your-unnatural-fences-and-worm-meds-and-chemicals is finished.