Wanted: Egg Thief
Several days in a row my children said that we did not get any eggs. “Are you feeding them?” I asked. “Do they have plenty of fresh water?” “Did you really look or are you just saying that?” When they reassured me that we had no eggs, I was slightly perplexed. How does one go from collecting a dozen eggs a day to absolutely none? “Do chickens go on strike?” Of course not, something had been stealing the eggs.
Well the next morning my questions were answered. My suspicions were confirmed. It was Kyla’s turn to collect the eggs. She went into the coop like usual, but came running out just seconds later. “MOM!!” she yelled. “MOM!!”
Clayton, the Snake-Slayer
“What is it? Calm down, sweetie.”
“A snake. There is a big snake in the chiminea.” (Our chickens love to lay their eggs in an old chiminea, not their nesting boxes. Go figure.)
I went to get a shovel and grabbed a hoe also. By the time I arrived back at the chicken yard, my husband and oldest son were already there having heard Kyla’s yells. As any good woman, I gladly handed Clayton, my son, the shovel and my husband the hoe. Lane lifted the snake out of the chiminea with the hoe. The snake was resting in it so comfortably all coiled up while digesting at least a dozen eggs. Needless to say, it did not enjoy being moved. Clayton took the shovel and killed it.
Normally I would let a non-poisonous snake go about its business, but I could not let this uninvited glutton continue to feast at our expense. It was a chicken snake. It had beautiful, colorful markings and was very long. Clayton is 5’9″ so you can gauge how tall the snake was. It was quite evident that we got the culprit. Egg yolks cannot lie. No maybe I can enjoy some of my own free-range eggs.
My family found one of these in our coop in late April. It too was over 5 feet long. It hadn’t eaten any eggs that we knew of, so my hubbie did a catch and release onto the property next to ours where no one lives….it hasn’t been seen again. Thank goodness!!
What a surprise! I would run screaming too.