Where O Where Did Our Little Birds Go?

This first week of September has gone by very fast. Before we know it winter will be here and the cold weather will be a relief. On Wednesday we lost our biggest goose. He just vanished without a trace. It really bugged me, I really liked the goose. He was very friendly and would eat out of our hands. We decided that we would keep the birds locked up during the day when we aren’t home and then let them out in the afternoon. We weren’t really sure when the birds were disappearing but this would rule out the daytime. The only loss we had on Thursday was our Polish chicken. We think that he may have had something wrong with him because he was acting a little lethargic and perhaps he just died of natural causes. But we can’t be sure.

This afternoon our son was taking our dog out for a walk around the yard. After about 5 minutes Matthew (our son) burst into the house and yelled SOMETHING GOT THE CHICKEN AND IS RUNNING AWAY WITH IT. My husband starts out the back door and I am looking out the kitchen window and I see a rather large Coyote slowly running close to the bank of the pond at the back of the property with one of our big white chickens in its mouth. So, Matthew, my Husband and Bruno (my dog) are running up the side of our property toward where the coyote is climbing back through the fence with his prize. I look at my daughter and tell her… dad is gonna be mad at Bruno, he isn’t even interested in that coyote.
I see them looking out across the field where the coyote went through the fence. There isn’t much that they can do at this point.
In a couple of minutes they all come back into the house and my Husband says that the coyote was taunting them with the chicken. It was just sitting by the fence and when they came close he shook the chicken at them and then climbed through the fence and went a couple of yards out and looked at them again and shook the chicken. He did this a couple of more times before he just ran off.
I told my Husband not to be mad at Bruno; he is a city dog that was transplanted to the country. He doesn’t spend very much time outside and wouldn’t know what to do with the coyote. Our next step is to buy some traps and see if we can take care of some of the coyote population around here.