The Tail of Something Nasty in the Henhouse - Part 3

Man (and chicken) vs. Beast

The life of our ermine was not cut short that night by a spring-loaded steel bar. He studiously ignored all three traps, baited with pieces of raw dead chicken, which I had laid in what I thought were cunning locations. Instead, he had feasted on the necks of three more live chickens, his jaws crunching into them with more force, relative to his size, than a lion, tiger, or bear – severing their spinal cords with one paralyzing bite. This is how these half-pound killing machines take down six pound chickens, or, in the wild, hares. They have a reputation for drinking the blood from the necks of their victims, but really it is just that necks are the weak points in most animals, and the ermine nation has learned how to exploit that fact mercilessly.

And who can blame our ermine for going for live, blood filled, warm chicken necks, and the relish of the kill, when all that was on offer in my traps were limp hunks of pale, factory farmed chicken breast? I wouldn’t eat that stuff, either.

I noticed several chickens over the following days with tufts of feathers missing from the backs of their necks, where they had had a close brush with the ermine’s death bite, but had escaped. One or two, however, had lost more than feathers; the ermine’s teeth had found flesh, and they later succumbed to their injuries.

I did gain one small victory on the intel front, though – I finally got my first picture of the face of my adversary, staring into the camera with defiant, glowing eyes, a dead chicken resting on the ground beside him.

I kept trying with the traps, changing up the bait. What mortal could resist the wafting odour of a freshly opened can of tuna fish? Well, he did. One of the trappers I spoke to dropped off some pieces of bloody beaver meat for me to try. Also a bust. Here’s a picture of him chowing down on one of my chickens, right in between two untouched traps.

This guy clearly had a taste for freshly slaughtered chicken – namely mine. I needed a change of tactics.

All I could think to do was to go out there after dark and physically guard them, pellet gun in hand. I lacked the stamina to do this all night, but, if I got lucky, I’d be there when he launched an attack.

I headed out around nine o’clock for my first shift, set a chair up in the middle of the coop, and waited. I was aware of how easily scared away an ermine would be, so sat as quietly as I could. It was interesting listening to the little noises the chickens made, soft clucks and sleepy breathing. Occasionally the rooster would erupt into a few nocturnal crows. At one point, I heard scrabbling noises, and gripped my gun tighter, thinking the ermine might be at the gates. But then I realized it was just some chickens adjusting themselves on their roosts. After about an hour, much like my earlier stakeout, the cold and the boredom got the better of me, and I called it a night.

I repeated this near-hopeless exercise several more times. The killing didn’t stop – including two of my son’s “pet” chickens, raised from chicks hatched the previous spring. They were some of my favourites too, for their beautiful, dark brown feathers and calm, friendly disposition.

But I was getting more photos of the intruder. Here’s one of him streaking along the nest boxes.

I finally clued in that there was more information in these photos than just his appearance. Note the time at the bottom: 4:40am. Documentary evidence from the next night showed the first photo, a blurry streak of a chicken running for her life, was snapped at 5:02am. The ermine had fallen into the habit of always coming in the wee hours of the morning. At last I knew at what time to launch Operation Poultry Shield!

I groggily rolled out of bed at 3:30am the next morning (or is that still night?) and got suited up. I taped a small flashlight to the barrel of my gun, and strapped on my headlamp. I loaded one pellet into the gun – it only holds one at a time – but left the tin container full of extra pellets at the house. I was afraid their rattling sound in my pocket would scare the critter off. This would prove a costly mistake.

I walked the 200 feet back to the coop through the moonless night. When I went inside the coop, I realized that the ermine had already struck. Damn, too late! I saw that he had tried to drag the chicken through the tiny hole he had entered. Ermine will sometimes pull their kills back to their den or a cache for later eating. He’d only managed to get the head through – the rest of the body was far too big. But there was a freshly fallen layer of snow on the ground – the first in weeks – so I went outside to look for tracks, which might lead me back to the beast’s lair.

I had just located the tracks when I heard the cry of a chicken in distress. “No, no, no, no!” I shouted as I ran back inside the coop. My emphatic “no’s” were a combination of not wanting another chicken to die, and disbelief that the ermine would strike while I was there. It was then that I first came face to face with my enemy. He was on top of a chicken on the ground, apparently delivering his death blow to the back of her neck. “Nooooo!” I bellowed one last time as I rushed towards the scene. The ermine darted away with impressive speed. I picked the chicken up. After recovering from the shock of her near-death experience, she appeared to be okay. I put her back on a high roost, saying, “You’re one lucky chicken.” I assumed the ermine had been scared off for tonight at least.

But I was wrong; the attack wasn’t over. I soon hear scrabbling again and saw his white head popping through another hole in the coop. Even with my headlamp trained on him, he was advancing in rapid, tentative bursts into the room, with all 400 beats per second of his heart going. I couldn’t believe his audacity. He wasn’t scared of me at all. The Dutch had got it right when they named this animal “bold”.

My blood now saturated with adrenaline, I raised my gun with shaky hands and tried to take aim through the scope. The beam from the flashlight taped to the barrel wasn’t quite hitting my target, and my headlamp’s light was slightly blocked by the scope. As the ermine continued his erratic darting, I took a deep breath and tried to steady my hands and lock him in the cross-hairs. I figured this would probably be the only shot I’d get, and needed to fire soon or miss my opportunity. I squeezed the trigger and felt the mild recoil. The pellet slammed harmlessly into a wooden wall, and my quarry flitted away back outside.

My one shot spent, I now had to shift into full defense mode. For the next 45 minutes, the ermine tested my defenses repeatedly, entering the coop from a half-dozen different places: holes in walls, cracks around doors, burrows underground. I had to be on my toes, because I had seen how quickly he could move, and how fast he could kill. He wouldn’t run away unless I physically ran at him. Impotently, I picked up a shovel, and threw that at him whenever I saw him. He would scamper away, and be back at a new hole minutes later.

Oh, how I cursed myself for not bringing extra ammunition! If only I had known how fearless he really was. I could have had a dozen shots at him.

At one point, I was sitting at the end of a row of nest boxes. Over top of them is a diagonal roof, with an attic-like space in between. The ermine ran through this attic to the end I was sitting beside, and looked out at me. If I possessed superhuman speed, I could have reached out and grabbed him.

But there would be no capturing the murderer that night. He eventually realized he wouldn’t be having a second course of fresh chicken, and disappeared into the still dark pre-dawn. For once, I had been able to prevent a death or two. And, importantly, he had shown me six different ways he could get in. I would buy a roll of hardware cloth and block them all off before night fell again. It was a small, but meaningful, victory.

A battle had been won, but the war was far from over.

Read Part 4 here. If you missed them, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.