I was due for an adventure. My days had been ending far too normally of late - I was getting used to shutting down and heading home.
Yesterday, my number came up!
As I drove down Sam Fabro Way to lock our front gate, I passed FortWhyte Farms chicken pasture. The pastured poultry live in large, moveable pens, called chicken tractors. However, the poultry were not so much pastured as...everywhere...including outside the knee-high electric fence in place to keep out animals like weasels.
I pulled my vehicle over, and quickly took stock of the situation.
(One could even say I took "chicken stock" of the situation, if one was fond of puns.. Not being that person, I won't...but one could say it if one was so inclined.)
White meat birds mingled with golden laying hens. A rooster was chasing hens, panicking them, and often as not causing the hens to take a short-hop flight, and land outside of their safety fence.
Stepping out of my vehicle and hopping the ditch, I realized that though I'm not a worker on the farm, this was my problem. Everyone else was home for the day - judging by the food and water supply, the farm had set the chickens up to be self-sufficient for the long weekend. I had to at least find some way of getting the chickens back inside their safety fence for the night. After all, what if a mink, skunk or a...
WEASEL!!!*
There it was! Fifteen yards from where I'd crossed the ditch, a long-tailed weasel popped up! It crawled to the edge of the safety fence, and stood on it's hing legs to get a better view of its prospective dinner.
I ran towards the weasel. It dropped to all fours, and slithered back into the well-vegetated ditch. The instant I turned my back, it poked its head out of cover, scanning for an errant chicken close enough to catch. I yelled, it hid. We played this game for a few minutes. More and more chickens hopped the fence into the danger zone.
I had a multi-tool. I had a first-aid kit; I wasn't sure how it might help, but there it was, on my belt. I had tried calling farm staff as soon as I saw what was going on, and received no answer, so my phone was not very much help. I had my trusty FortWhyte Alive ball cap.
I had escaped chickens. I had a hungry weasel watching the escaped chickens.
It's been said that heroes are not born, they're made. I tend to think they're not made, they're called.
An agricultural adventure was calling. Collect. I accepted the charges, and waded into the clucking, feather-flying, dropping-slicked whirlwind. Where was this going to end up? The only thing I knew for sure: I was not going to lose a chicken to the weasel.
Does Barret slip on chicken poop? Does the hungry weasel have a chicken dinner? Is the first aid kit actually useful?
Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of Feathered Follies.
* This weasel image is courtesy of the US National Park Service, and is in the public domain. The author acknowledges that though this is a fine-lookin' weasel, it is not the actual weasel from the story. This image was used without the weasel's permission.
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