All preparations are in place to go to Ireland. We renewed our passports, booked the hotels, rented the car, reserved the parking space with a shuttle to the airport...
The only thing we paid for in full is the flight, and now the pilots are on strike—or "having a row" as it said in the newspaper.
Oh, and scaredy girl (Jessie) is booked at the dog spa since she still is not especially cooperative about coming in the house. She spends almost the whole day outside, mostly in the back, in the weeds, in the shade.
A boost of her anti-anxiety pills helped with convincing her to stay inside for the fireworks on the weekend, but we were all surprised and unprepared for the fireworks at midnight the night before the 4th.
And then July got even worse. The day after seeing an obviously sick, stumbling raccoon wander right past our free-ranging chickens, we lost 3 chickens to an unknown predator (it wasn't the raccoon). We tried to enclose the remaining chickens inside the fence by the coop, but they already knew they could fly over that. That's why they are free range again after losing several to a fox attack 3 years ago.
Somehow I got them closed up early for the next 2 nights.
Then we went to a friend's house yesterday for about 3 hours in the afternoon, and came home to feathers all over the yard. Just that fast we lost 7 more chickens. We only have 5 left in the big coop who, so far today, are scared enough to stay inside the fence.
I think the days of our free ranging chickens are over for good, but only if they continue to cooperate.
So sorry to hear about your predator woes. That stinks.
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