Random Story – I hit a possum with a shovel and a duck flew at me

 This is just an odd little story from my life.

I live on a farm and we’ve had chickens for as long as I can remember.  A few years ago, our rooster … lost a fight with the rooster in the truck bumper.  (On occasion he would attack his reflection, and one time he attacked so hard he broke his own neck.)  So our hens were on their own.  A few months later, one of our neighbor’s roosters noticed these single ladies and joined them.  I’m not sure what breed he was, but he was half the size of our hens, so I don’t know if he tried anything, but after hanging with them for a few days he followed them into our coop at night.  So we again had a rooster.  We also had some ducks who also spent the nights in our coop. 

Well, one night I was out at 2:00 AM or something – I can’t remember if I was just taking our dog out to pee, or if I was out to look at the stars – but I heard some commotion coming from the coop.  Wondering what was up, I went to see.  I opened the door and saw that a possum had gotten inside.  The little rooster had tried to defend the ladies, but the possum had killed it.  But I guess the possum didn’t think it was enough of a meal, because it was dragging a duck by the neck. 

I stepped outside and grabbed a shovel that was nearby.  I went back in and swung as hard as I could with the intention of beating that possum to death.  But when I hit it, it opened its mouth and the duck – which I thought was dead – was only playing possum and made a break for it.  Unfortunately, the only way out was right where I was standing, so this quacking, flapping, zombie duck came almost right at my face.  And once they saw the way was clear, all the other ducks and hens followed.

Once they were out of the way, and my heart rate slowed to 100 BPM, I went back in, but the possum had gone out the way it had come in.  We used to let the chickens out a small door, but we blocked it off and had just let them go in and out the people door.  But the blocking had come loose and the possum was able to squeeze in.

I looked all around, but I couldn’t see where the possum had gotten to.  I blocked up the door again, took out the brave little rooster, and after ten minutes or so, the chickens went back in the coop.  But the ducks were too spooked; they wouldn’t go back in.  I figured they would probably be okay for one night outside – they were probably too scared to sleep – so I let them be.  But the next night they wouldn’t go in the coop.  Or the night after that.  In fact, it might have been a year or more before they went back into the coop during the day to eat.

Don’t worry too much for the ducks.  They hung around our coop for a few days, but then they wandered over to the neighbor’s.  I guess they felt safer in their chicken coop.

So that’s the story of when I hit a possum with a shovel and duck flew at me.