Possum in the Chicken Food ~ Oh My!

In the Moment

As I was looking out my window facing the backyard yesterday afternoon, I saw a large possum about to plunge his face in the center of the chicken feed. What the heck!! Since my husband was running errands in town, it was up to me to get rid of this varmint.

We have had roosters which meant that we had chicks which meant that we had LOTS of roosters for a very short (not to me) time one spring a few years back. Once we had 5 roosters, which is 5 too many if you asked me!

That said, I had a sling shot with marbles from the "good ol' days" of breaking up daily rooster fights in the yard. I am a pretty good shot, too. Sooooooo......no pictures of possum because I wanted that sucker out of my yard and long gone before even the idea of pictures crossed my mind.

Oh, and we do have dogs. I let them out and they immediately ran to the north side of the house to bark at the neighbor dogs that come over to establish territorial lines. Even after they discovered that there was no dog threat, and even after I yelled at the possum after several warning shots, my dogs did NOT help me (again) with the possum.

Threat Averted

This wasn't my first interaction with a possum (although this one looked rather large), so I wasn't especially worried. I am just opposed to feeding rodents if I can help it. A few years back, we had a possum that had a broken leg that wanted to bed with the hens. My husband ended up shooting him, and he took a little longer than I would have liked to die. We just figured that he wasn't going to make it that winter and we have had possums kill our hens in the past (at our old house).

Anyway, I will be looking out for this possum and even moving the chicken's food if necessary so that we don't have a future issue with this big guy.

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Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend and I hope you like some of the photos of the farm.

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~all photos taken by me