Fowl Play, a Case of Chicken Murder.

Fowl Play, a Case of Chicken Murder.


Today started like any other day, I got up late-9:00 A.M. to be precise. I fed my two dogs Ivan and Anna and my cat Pia. Then I went out to let my fourteen chickens into the run for the day. I checked their food and water –both were full- then watched them run around for a few minutes. I went back in the house and ran a load of laundry while I had a glass of juice and some blueberries for my breakfast.

I took a quick shower after breakfast and got dressed; afterwards I went out and checked on my chickens again. I watched one in particular-Buffy was just out of chick-hood and was a brown and black and orange-ish bird with a very sweet personality. I soon grew bored of watching my birds bustle around busily eating bugs, so I went in the house again. I soon left for the store, a haircut, and gifts for my father; when I returned the mystery was revealed. With no knowledge of how it happened, I saw Buffy lying dead on the ground!

I saw the other birds huddled together in the coop clucking in fear, they no doubt were witnesses. I quickly closed the door to the run so I could remove poor Buffy’s corpse. I saw that her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle and torn to shreds, blood dripping and flesh and feathers gone. Her throat was ripped open so that I could see bones on the inside-where they had collapsed as she was slaughtered mercilessly by a predator on the outside of the run. I knew that the predator was on the outside because the blood that splattered out from the bite wound, dripped into the sand next to the coop-not in it.

As I put Buffy in a cardboard box filled with straw a tear rolled out of my eye and landed on her body. Then I saw something disturbing-her body wasn’t relaxed, it was stiff! Had she been killed just moments before I got home? I had started to walk back up to the house when I saw the bloodied feathers on the ground, a trail! I followed it back and forth around the yard until I saw where it was headed, the lake!

I ran inside, got out a book on chicken predators, and flipped to page 165. There it was in black and white. Weasels live in woody water-front areas, they kill one or two chickens at a time with a bite to the head-and then they drink the blood. I had found an almost perfect match to the murder. I prepare to give Buffy a funeral pyre later this evening and I wish that there was someway to prove my hypothesis that the killer was a weasel. I wish I could turn back time and save Buffy from this fate, but I know she is in a better place now.


A true story of events on June 17, 2010