That One Time I Fought a Trash Panda

From the Tales of being a Chicken Dad

At 3am, I awakened to distant screams. I laid in my bed, comfortable and dozing under my white duvet. I presumed my three year-old was having a nightmare. In the past couple months, Malcom would infrequently have a bad dream and a short back rub would put him back to sleep. But, when the screams continued, they reminded me of six months ago, when a predator attacked our chickens.

I got up hastily and opened the sliding glass door in my second-floor bedroom. The chicken coop in the backyard was to my right. Since Malcolm was asleep in his bedroom, if he was screaming, I would hear it from the left side. I crouched down and waited for another sound. Then, I heard a distressed squawk into my right ear.

I put on pajamas as quickly as I could. I realized Nilly was in my bed - she must have come in at some point in the middle of the night - and hoped she would stay asleep. I grabbed my iPhone. I ran down the stairs, put on my light down jacket, ran to the back of the house and opened the door into the backyard. In the darkness, in forty degree April weather, I walked to the chicken coop and shined my iPhone light at the door.

The door to our new chicken coop, bought several weeks ago because the previous one was falling apart, was a sliding metal door that was marketed as “predator-proof.” It operated on a timer so the door opened at dawn and closed before dusk. I had made sure the door closed earlier in the night. I assumed the door accidentally opened since something had attacked the chickens.

When I walked up to the black coop, the squawking subsided. I shined the flashlight at the metal door. Fully closed. No evidence of damage. The nesting box door was locked in place. The coop had no other areas of entry or openings. My heart raced. Something was inside with my four chickens.

The coop has two half-circle vents, each a diameter of six inches. I shined my light into the vent. A calm creature with glowing white eyes glared back at me. I noticed a white stripe over its eyes. It was resting in the nesting box. I heard chickens cooing.

I hit the button to open the metal door. It slid upwards. The raccoon stayed in place, relaxing, as if it had nothing else to do.

“Get. Out,” I said, as if the raccoon understood English.

I saw the smokiness of my breath. I repeated myself. The raccoon laid there, wanting rest after murder.

I ran to my shed and grabbed a long garden weeder. I stuck the weeder through the chicken run into the coop and forcefully poked the raccoon. I wish I could have punched it. The raccoon didn’t move. Suddenly, two chickens darted into the ten-foot long chicken run. One was white; that was Audrey. The other black; that was Bonita.

I stepped back for a second and thought about my situation. The raccoon was not leaving and now I had two remaining chickens in the run. I did not want the raccoon to murder my remaining birds.

I prioritized Bonita and Audrey. I closed the coop door. I ran back to the shed and grabbed a cage. I opened the door to the chicken run and wanted to see if they would come to me. Bonita and Audrey were frightened, standing in place with their heads looking away. They were not going to come to me. I would have to grab them.

Normally, when I have to grab a chicken to return them to their coop, I grab them by the tail and then place both my hands around their wings to prevent them from flapping. Then, I gently place them where they need to be. In this situation, if I was going to grab them, they were going to scream bloody hell and put up a fight because they couldn't distinguish me from their predator. They had just seen two of their friends killed.

I tried grabbing Audrey but failed. I shined a light on her. Red spots painted her white feathers. I wondered what kind of viruses I could pick up from chicken blood splattered onto another chicken from raccoon teeth (Rabies, definitely rabies). After a few failed attempts and the chickens screaming at me, I wondered what Dan and Amy, my neighbors across the fence, would think of me if they had seen me at 3am, in my pajamas, trying to grab my birds.

The only way I was going to succeed was if I grabbed Bonita and Audrey by the tail and threw them in the cage. That’s exactly what I did.

Fuck the raccoon; I left it in the coop. If it was smart enough to get in past the metal door, it would figure how to get out. I decided I would come back in the morning and see if it was still there. I put Bonita and Audrey, both caged, in the garage. I washed my hands thoroughly with soap in the kitchen, took my jacket off, then walked upstairs to Nilly. I don’t know why I opened my FitBit app on my phone, but it showed me that I had earned 15 zone minutes. Not bad for 3:30am.

Jillian had traveled to Edmonton for a family medicine conference. I kept her plants alive in her absence, and our two children, but only half our chickens. The deceased chickens needed to be removed from the coop. But first, the kids and I attended a birthday party in the morning.

“How are you guys?” asked Jessica, the birthday host, when we arrived at the trampoline park.

“We’re doing great!” I said. I have two dead chickens in my backyard!

I bounced ten feet high and we were the last family to leave the birthday party.

We came home and I put on Peter Pan for the kids. I prepared for carcass removal. I put on garden gloves and a facemask that I had from the hospital. The raccoon had left and somehow had jostled the metal door off. I took off two sides of the chicken coop and saw our two pets. While I have no problem with human bodies that no longer have souls, my stomach always becomes queasy with dead animals. You know that job of removing roadkill? Whoever does that should be compensated fairly. And then given a raise.

I removed the carcasses into two large trash bags and moved the garbage bin to the road. Later that evening, Jillian flew home from Canada and we screwed the coop door back on. A raccoon has such good dexterity that it was able to open the door but I needed to barricade the run better. Living next to the Arboretum supplies a constant flow of critters.

Being a chicken owner is jarring at times but it’s worth it. I love being around them. One of my few memories of being a toddler in Bangladesh was walking around a backyard with chickens. Chickens are calming. They don’t ask much of me. I give them food and water and they reward me with fresh eggs and company.

I was so mad at the raccoon the following day. Malcolm has a raccoon stuffed animal on his bed and I wanted to kick it. I refrained.

After the attack, the only way I calmed myself was by remembering the lessons from a children’s book, Sonya’s Chickens. In the story, Sonya lovingly raises three chicks into hens. She’s ecstatic when she gets her first egg. Then one night, one of her hens goes missing due to a fox. Sonya is distraught but her parents explain to her that the fox is also providing for their family. They need to eat. It’s the circle of life.

When I step back, I think about what humans have done to chickens and how terrible factory farming is. In the US, nine billion chickens are killed every year for their meat. Three hundred million chickens are used for egg production.¹ I’m not exempt from using chickens. I take eggs from my birds every day.

Human activity is progressively causing habitat loss for wild animals. The bushfires in Australia in 2019 and 2020 displaced three billion animals.² The Amazon rainforest is 10 million years-old and humans only inhabited the area 13,000 years ago. Yet, at its current rate of deforestation, a quarter of the Amazon rainforest will be without trees by 2030.³

So, the real question isn’t, how do I protect my chickens from raccoons? Rather, that night, who was the real predator?

1. https://www.aspca.org/protecting-farm-animals/animals-factory-farms

2. https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/australia-after-bushfires#:~:text=Unprecedented%20losses,Fund%20for%20Nature%20(WWF).

3. https://time.com/amazon-rainforest-disappearing/