While I was not writing blog posts our chooks were all killed by a fox. The two old ones, and a new one we'd only had for about six weeks and who hadn't even started laying eggs yet, the poor baby. It was the middle of the night and we heard nothing and knew nothing until the morning. Dorian went out the back door to go to work and came back in immediately. He told me to sit down on the bed because there had been a disaster. My first thought was of Basil but I had seen him in the kitchen just a minute before so I thought it couldn't be him. Dorian said all the chooks had been killed. We went outside and it was horrible. There were feathers all over the yard and some spots of blood on the concrete. There was a torn-off wing half-buried in a flowerbed, and worst of all, around the corner of the house there was a headless chicken corpse just dropped there. Presumably the fox had dropped it as it ran to jump over the low brick wall.
Dorian buried the headless one under a china flat peach tree. I think it was the boss chook, judging by its weight. The poor old thing. Although the chook I really feel sad for was the new one, which we were calling No.3, because she never had the fun that the others did. They had only just stopped being mean to her, pulling her feathers and so on. I don't know if we'll get any others.
