Fox in the Hen House

Today we had our first run in with a live Red Fox in the yard. Sorry no pictures.

The chickens were free ranging and feasting on garden critters and I was hauling stuff through the yard to take care of another brush pile. Then this cute adorable looking Red Fox comes rushing up out of the ferns, and through the garden on it's way to steal at least one of my chickens while it was hard at work.

I dropped the wheel barrow can run towards the fox to cut it off. You could see the fox was confused and considering it's life choices. Do I ignore the flailing bi-ped? Do I abort and run away? Maybe I can snatch one and run away with it? And while I'm running at it I'm thinking do I wring it's neck, or do I punt it. The fox decided to try to snatch and run, which meant I couldn't punt it without for sure getting the chicken it also chose.

So I'm flailing and yelling trying to get a grab at the back of it's neck. There was no way it was going to get a free meal off my flock after we just started getting steady eggs from them. The fox decided it wanted to live, and got off the chicken and ran like hell. Turns out foxes bounce. It didn't see the new fencing that was going up and ran right straight into it. He bounce straight back off the fencing and headed back towards me briefly. He decided that wasn't a wise direction either and choose a very wide loop around the back of the yard and slinked up the gully to where I think it's den is.

The poor chicken the fox grabbed is just fine now. She lost a couple of feathers and hid somewhere safe for a couple hours before coming back to join the flock in their run.

This fall fox goes on my menu. I'll be looking forward to breakfasts of fox and eggs, and bow hunting with a nice fox muff.