Why it's still fun to have backyard chickens even though they attract filthy, rabid, creatures.

For a while I have to admit I was ready to give up chicken farming. ( If you can call raising two hens with princess names "farming", which I don't think you can. ) After the masked bandit massacre of the first "Sarah" and "Kate" we were on hyper alert for vermin in the back yard.  If you choose to stay indoors after dark in the city you will remain blissfully unaware of what lurks in the night outside your door. But that was not us.  No, we kept all the garage, porch, and balcony lights on and slept with one eye open after the brutal demise of our biddies. Our bedroom has a screen door that opens onto a balcony overlooking the back yard and on this balcony Ed and the kids had arranged an arsenal of raccoon weaponry.  Rocks, water balloons, bricks, a stuffed animal that looked pretty convincing as a fat alpha raccoon daddy.  The neighbour actually gave us his slingshot and asked to be woken up if we heard anything and there were several over-the-fence conversations about how ludicrous it is to read front page headlines about people who take city-rodent population issues into their own hands. 
      The buggers came snarling, a whole family of them, on the first night.  We aimed, fired, and missed, full of adrenaline and a sense of vigilante justice, but not of skill in marksmanship.   We would improve as each night passed we resolved, but soon we got a little tired of spending our days bleary-eyed because we had spent too much time whipping rocks into the dark at 3 and 4 in the morning.    One night while doing "the sweep" with the flashlight off the porch, Ed and the kids saw 4 raccoons, an unidentified slithery mammal (a possum?, a weasel?) and caught a strong whiff of skunk, all within an hour.  We began just muttering "shut up" out the open window from the comfort of our beds.  We were outnumbered.  Sure, there was talk about live traps,  leg-hold traps, antifreeze, and shotguns.  But these were mostly suggestions from my dad who has never lived in the city and tells stories about his grandmother who hypnotized chickens and performed gizzard surgeries out back of the barn.  We city people don't know how to handle things ourselves. 
    We reinforced the chicken wire with $80 worth of heavier guage stuff and the lost chickens were replaced with new hens which our son, very economically, christened with the same names as their predecessors.  The new "Sarah and Kate"  had to bear many scathing comparisons to the old pair and sadly came up short in egg laying, plumpness and personality.  This, we later learned was probably due to the fact that they were not quite "ready to lay" as our order to the chicken store had requested.  It took them two weeks to begin popping out treasures for the kids to steal and once they did, they were instantly better liked and thought to be rather smart after all. 
    That was 2 months ago.  We've stopped even thinking about critters in the night.  I suspect they were always around and it wasn't the fault of the backyard poultry that now we were more aware of them.  If the chickens are locked up tight they can go about their nasty business and we don't care.
     Except today at 3:00 in the afternoon the kids were outside and had let the chickens out to roam (and decimate the swiss chard patch).  I was called out to help put the chickens back in their pen when my oldest boy yelled "MOM, LOOK!"  and pointed to the corner of the yard where a fat raccoon was sauntering along the hedge.  Like a true hero, born of desperate times,  I sprang into action to protect child and beast from the menace trespassing our land.  I seized a nearby (dollar store) lacrosse stick and leapt into battle, screaming like a girl.  The insouciant beast neither flinched nor quickened its casual gait.  It looked at me a second and over the pounding of my heart I may have heard it mutter " Put the toy stick down , Idiot"  and then it was over the fence on its way to nowhere in particular.  But I shudder to think what may have befallen our ladies if it weren't for the quick thinking and valour of Crazy Lady this day. 
    And that's why I'm glad we still have the chickens even if they may attract vermin.  Never underestimate how much fun it is to chase vermin.