MURDER IN THE MIDDLE PASTURE

(Originally titled "Mystery Solved." )

There is seldom a dull moment at our house. With four dogs, eight cats, fourteen chickens, six goats, two ponies and four humans, we stay busy. Last weekend when Kaylee and I went to feed the animals, we noticed a lot of chicken feathers outside of their pen. This usually means that one of the braver chickens has decided to "fly the coop" to see what life is like on the outside. We looked and looked for a chicken in the yard and around the barn, but never found one. We counted the others and came up one chicken short (we used to have 15), and then decided not to assume the worst until it could be confirmed that the missing chicken had met with an untimely demise. We knew it was a possibility, however, because even though chickens can fly, for some reason they just don't! So when they are cornered instead of taking to the air, they run around in circles, well, kind of like a chicken with it's head cut off! Our next clue in the chicken mystery was that the dogs and cats were acting strange. They have been digging holes in the yard and acting territorial. There's been the kind of animal tension in the air that you could almost cut with a knife. When the dogs were outside, the cats were banded together and the two species kind of circling each other in a dog/cat standoff. More feathers were found in various places in the yard, and we inspected the places where the animals had been digging, but never found a body. Finally, last night around 10pm, Brit let the dogs out before bedtime and a couple of minutes later, Jasmine, our cattle dog mix strolled casually onto the deck with a dead, dirty, frozen chicken in her mouth! BAD DOG!!! I suspected her all along! I think she kept burying the carcass in the yard and then the cats would dig it up every night while she was inside sleeping. So, then she would have to bury it again somewhere else, only to find the cats had discovered it again the next morning! She reluctantly handed it over to Brit so that we could give the poor chicken a proper burial in the S.L. County landfill. Mystery solved.