I've misled everyone, I think. My mother said to me yesterday, "Will you quit saying that his throat was slit? It makes it sound like a person killed him!" It's pretty unlikely that a person killed him, we think. I live on a dead-end camp road where all the traffic is from lifelong neighbor-friends. Right now there are less than 10 winter residents on the road. The only person who threatened Roland's life was my cousin, Mark, who hates roosters, but loves me. Plus, being a summer resident, he was having Thanksgiving at his home 35 miles away. He did threaten Roland the very day the bird showed up dead, and I intend to make him feel bad about it the next time we talk. But he wouldn't really kill him. Here's how the bird's wounds are better described (I was really horrified to see him and his eyes were open, so I didn't examine him the way a mature person would have.): (You might not want to read this.) He was on his back and his throat was ripped open. The reason it looked slit to me was that in the middle of the throat was a white divider--a bone or cartilage that ran from his beak down the middle of the wound. It looked like two separate lengthwise injuries down each side of oh! could it be his windpipe? They weren't really slits, though, his entire throat was damaged. I live on a lake, and a few years ago, I saw what looked like a horrible, furry, snake weaving its creepy body in and throughout the rocks on the shore. When the loud screeching stopped, I realized that what I might have seen was a mink. I've never seen another weasel or mink my whole life, but I did see a dead mink on the road once about 4 miles from here. My birds generally spend their days in a pen connected to their house. It is a dog kennel with the sides reinforced with chicken wire. I am fairly confident that it is hawk, dog, raccoon and fox-proof. There are a few breaches in the system that a skinny thing like a mink or weasel could---maybe---get through. My birds get locked in their house every night after they roost, but I'm often lax about what hour I close their little hen door. Nothing has ever bothered them, so the idea of it being a weasel is surprising to me. But not impossible to imagine. It's the total lack of blood on the bird and under him that has me so puzzled. (I did find part of his comb---a tiny tip torn off---the only damage to it. I found that in the house.) I haven't seen any sign of a struggle outside of the house, and the idea that he might have walked home that damaged upsets me, so I stopped looking around yesterday. In the last 24 hours, I've eliminated the hens. They have no blood on them. I feel good about that. The human theory is not impossible, but it would take an especially angry person to toss the bird back into my henhouse. It would have had to be a stranger to my road and it would have had to have happened between 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm on Thanksgiving. Thank you for thinking it through with me. And thank you for your sympathy. I was going to write again about Roland because I'd given him such a bad rap before. Once he figured out having sex with animate objects, he seemed to settle down. I had become very fond of my little charge (pun intended) in the 28 days I knew him.

Before too long in our neck of the woods,the deer "harvest" will begin. What a pretty way to say kill. At least call it what it is,whether you enjoy doing that or wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Good pictures,both of you. It's too bad something so beautiful can be such a pain in the patootie sometimes.

Tonight was Round Two. Arriving home from a shopping trip to Dallas, I went into the chicken coop to turn on the heat lamp to keep the keats warm overnight and there was a big old long chicken snake stretched out on the chicken roost. Of course, by the time I turned on the lamp and saw him or her, I was already past the snake and it was between me and the door, so I had to go back past the snake to exit the chicken coop. (sigh) Several "hysterical woman" phone calls later, two sets of neighbors arrived, gloves and guns in hand. (We have the world's most wonderful friends and neighbors.) One dragged that ugly old snake out of the chicken house, the other shot it, and peace and calm reigned again. I did call DH at work to tell him that his "snakeproof" chicken coop, as he has repeatedly described it since building it--most recently two days ago--is NOT snakeproof. (I wish it was.) I believe we will spend his days off attempting to do some more snakeproofing. The good news is that, for the second time in a week, a snake got into the building but not into the bird brooder cage, which DS apparently did an excellent job of snakeproofing. And, I hate to say that for fear I will jinx us and the next snake we see will be inside the cage eating keats. And, by the way, fresh, home-grown tomatoes are an excellent "thank you" to give a neighbor who comes running to rescue your keats from a big ol' bad ol' snake. I gave one neighbor a bagful and promised one to bring one to the other neighbor tomorrow after I pick tomatoes. Only six more weeks until the keats are theorectically large enough that a snake cannot crush them and eat them. Of course, it still will be a battle with the other predators, but the guineas usually can fight that battle on their own pretty well. Ada, my cousin's cat was picked up and carried away by a red-tailed hawk about 25 or 26 years ago....and then the hawk dropped the cat into a pasture and it made its own way home, a little scratched up and bloodied, but it survived. However, from what I recall, that cat pretty much stayed inside the house after that....and that cousin had a big snake problem as well, but with western diamondback rattlers.....I'd rather have the chicken snakes. Dawn P.S. If the neighbors hadn't come to our rescue, I guess Kristine and I would have shot it, but we would not have dragged it out of the chicken coop first, because we weren't going to touch it....and we didn't really want to blow a hole in the wall.

So sorry that you have lost Martha. I remember the egg picture you posted a long time ago. Maybe she will meet some of my feathered friends there who kept my father company.