Chicken’s Corner: A Little Spring

Just looking at the screenshot above and I have never been more proud of Chicken—although proud is not normally a descriptor I’d use in my relationship with him so the bar is low.

We’ve had several break-ins and break-in attempts recently, over the last years, months, weeks, and Jon got some cameras installed so we could get alerted if anyone jumped any of the fences or the gate. Earlier this year, someone tried to break into the third floor bedroom and it was actually Tuna who woke me up to it. The other day some freaky person rang our doorbell in broad daylight, on a Saturday, and, after standing there in a corner for several minutes, threw a rock through our front door, breaking the glass. The cops were disconcertingly, if not unsurprisingly, unconcerned, suspecting he was just a troublemaker looking to cause some trouble, but it was a bit spooky nonetheless. It’s all a bit much, and apparently Covid has made people on the fringes a little more desperate, a little more wild.

So now we have cameras everywhere, and buttons to press for alarms and things. It turns out that 90% of the alerts are, during the day, squirrels and at night, raccoons,*bing *bing *bing *bing *bing. But the cameras have also turned out to be helpful for letting us know when Chicken is at the back door, waiting to be let in. We’re not supposed to let Tuna out anymore because he has his contagious virus and also we’re supposed to be giving him medicine on a schedule, so Chicken is once again ranging solo. Orange cat on the outside, grey cat on the inside, both looking through the glass at each other with varying thoughts.

The other day the alerts went off and in the camera we discovered our trusty shop cat, driving off the bandits. I consider myself an animal person, and yet I find raccoons to be my archnemeses. They poo and pee and get into the garbage and plants and they’re massive and they wobble at you pretty fast considering how massive they are. I feel like one or two of them could take me down if they really put their mind to it. And here is our shop cat, claws out, all his batting practice with Tuna being put to good use. I wish I had the technological capabilities to upload a video because it was magnificent, certainly more than I would do, cowering behind the door.