Hey there.

So to follow up, I did a quick inspection on the hive this morning and it’s not looking good. No sign of the queen, there’s no brood, no capped cells, no honey, and we’re looking at maybe 100 girls left in there. Meaning it’s a dead hive walking buzzing.

Pretty disheartening. Made moreso since that damn bear keeps coming back each night and trying to get into our chicken feeder.

Yes Beverly. That noise outside your coop each night is a damn bear juggling the Grandpa’s Chicken Feeder that houses your breakfast.

Although, I gotta hand it to those Aussies that built that thing…it’s holding up just fine to consistent, nightly bear raids. I mean, it’s flipped over and bent all to hell each morning from having 300 lbs. of black bear using it like a Peloton…but a quick round of sheet metal origami and it’s right back in place and functioning like nothing happened.

Unfortunately, I feel like this bear tale is going to have a rather unpleasant ending. When bears get acclimated to being this close to people, that’s typically when drastic, high velocity lead-lined measures are undertaken…either by the local game warden or by irritated homeowners who are sick-and-goddamn-tired of dustpanning up scattered trash for the 4th time this month.
I would count myself in the latter camp, however the rifle that’s currently on loan to me would do little but make the bear angry. (A .22 varmint rifle that’s quite good at plinking foxes…which is a story for another time.)

But, in the interim, I fear we’ll have to stay vigilant, and consistently noisy, for our chooks.

This is a risk that we made the conscious decision to take with them, knowing that they will likely meet their demise staring down the gullet of something with very sharp claws, talons, and/or fangs.

But, up to that violent end, they live their absolutely best chicken lives, happily foraging for bugs through acres of grass, dirt, and wildflowers. They are at their most chicken-ness each day. And it’s hard to put a price on that.

Yes, it’s a trade off, but it’s one we believe in.

Now someday a particularly consistent predator might make us change our minds about that, and we’ll need to lock them up for a while, for their own safety.

That’ll be a sad day.

j.s.