Sometimes a Sensitive Mama Clucker

I’ve had my first experience with trapping over the last week or so. I always wondered why the farming stores had so many live traps and, in my city mindset, had this romantic ideal that farming folks trapped the critters just so they could take them to refuges or some other such oasis and let them live their lives out.  

I couldn’t have had thoughts further from the actual truth – at least, most of the time.

Following the slaughter’fest that happened with the small breed chickens, I wanted to find the culprit predator that caused such a major loss. I wanted to rebuild and didn’t want to put birds back into a situation that would result in the same outcome.

I did what any city girl would do and enlisted the help of a neighbor who has been in farming for generations who immediately suggested we set up traps to catch the offender and, he noted, get rid of it.

It didn’t take me two rooster crows to figure out what he was talking about. He was talking about getting RID of it. Like, dead; deceased, to the big forest in the sky, all the prey they want, dead. The city gal in me wanted to scream “Oh hell no,” but the budding country voice (which isn’t always the loudest) whispered “you know he’s right.”

This neighbor was right. Predators don’t belong around barns and having all-you-can-eat buffets of chicken and whatever else is picking around the yard. Predators have a place in the woods and far from civilization.

Now, before you start calling judgement and saying that predators have been pushed out of their wooded homes by other residential developments and therefore belong on my property to pretty much take whatever they wish, I have to respectfully disagree though I do agree that there has been a surge in development recently and this is disheartening.

Most of the time, I live in harmony with the nature that surrounds me. I have moles that are doing some serious damage to the yard and will need to be taken care of sooner or later, but for the most part the critters stay away and I get to put my chickens out to enjoy the day and then lay super tasty eggs.

Things had changed though, since the predator attack and something needed to be done.

So, the neighbor graciously traveled over with his ATV and dropped 4 live traps at various places around the property. He told me that raw meet would attract the most action and unwrapped four frozen slabs of ribs that he said were too old (2016).

I remember laughing just a bit that this was considered “old” for meat. I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten frozen meat that is somewhere in the 5-10 year range. Again, difference in city-gal and country folk. I’ll get there.

The first morning I went out to open the coop door and check the traps and found a very young opossum looking at me cautiously from the confines of the metal wire cage. I knew what the neighbor had said, “that we would get rid of them”, but this one was young, small and far away from the barns. I knew that this wasn’t one of the culprits to damage done around the barn and worked to free the critter – remembering to keep my fingers free from any teeth.

The second morning found another opossum in the same wire trap, though this one was bigger, and a skunk in the trap located in the barn itself where the small breed chickens used to be.

Again, the opossum got to roam free and I returned to the trap in the barn – knowing what the fate was going to be for this creature.

I accept that some folk will relish in the fact that they get to kill a creature, but that’s just not who I am. I knew that there was no way that I could release this fellow and something had to be done.

Under a hazy moonlit night a few hours later, the neighbor came over with his .22 rifle to dispatch the creature humanely. It was a lot quicker than I thought it would be. Only the “snap” of the gun and a small turning of the critter and it was gone.

I remember remarking how much more peaceful that was than to watch a chicken in its final seconds.

Death is never easy and should never be taken lightly. In a sense I see it as power and perhaps that’s what makes me struggle with it. I oftentimes see it as me saying that I am more powerful than whatever I am needing to kill and why should I get to live and the creature at hand has to die?

This being said though, the neighbor reminded me that I needed to think of the other things that need to live on the farm to make it work and that this one skunk could very well wipe that out.

Again, he was right.

That soft country voice is growing louder as I spend more time on this farm and every experience I have, whether good or bad, is a step in the path to becoming a full-fledged farmer. I don’t know that I will ever be comfortable with killing and death and perhaps I don’t want to be.

I have to think that there are others out there just like me.