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DL's Link
So those is where that saying comes from.
"But chickens, like all birds, are the descendants of dinosaurs." Not!
Watch a weasel go to work in a hen house. Kills them all eats part of one and is gone. Ounce for ounce these bastards are pure evil.
The Rock
Only reason they got the upper hand is because he was a pup and probably got easily intimidated and went on the defense instead of offense. An adult fox in the hen house is real bad news for the hens.
Weasels aren't evil. They're effective, and sometimes inquisitive. Used to have a tiny least weasel that would come into the bow shop and watch me work if the weather was nice and I had the door open.
Jeff,
To humans. Inspect a hen house after a weasel has entered and after he leaves. He peels the back of the head off every single chicken and kills them all for the sheer joy of it. Eats a little and leaves. That is what I call evil.
The Rock
....just found this on the net.
"Chickens with the back of their necks and heads missing, with its intestines out and bitten at the rear are most likely victims of this wily animal. What's interesting is that weasels kill not only for food, but also for sport. In fact, they are known to keep killing until there is nothing left to kill."
When I lived in Virginia my landlord ran a bird hunting operation - pheasants, quail and chuckers. He raised his own birds. A weasel got in by his pheasants and wrecked havoc. He just buried the birds. I told him if it ever happened again to give me a call and I would take the dead birds. Two weeks later he called. More havoc. I picked up 70 dead pheasants. I had to get help to clean them all.
We have weasel cousins here, mongoose. Lots of em. When our hunting club started trapping them in our bird hunting area the wild hatch tripled. We took out 50 or 60 the first season.
Long ago the rats came on island from the big ships. They exploded. Somebodies cool "green" idea was "hey! lets bring in some mongoose to kill the rats!" as apparently in Asia they heard some sailors kept them on board to keep the rats (and snakes) down. Didn't work out well on land. Seems rats come out at night and mongoose hunt during the day. Rarely do the two hook up. So now we have lots of rats AND lots of mongoose....
TD.....Hawaii should have taken a page/pages out of Australia’s invasive species control handbook.
Oh, wait.......never mind
Yeah Rock, they do that. I don't like it either, but I don't think it's evil. It's just their nature, instinctual. Other animals kill 'for sport', for practice, out of instinct, etc as well. They kill and walk away. Cats come to mind. My neighbor lady 'saves' house cats from the humane society, brings them home, and let's them run... until they get killed on the road. In the meantime, they kill rabbits. I've found several dead in my yard, not a single bite eaten. Ticks me off, but I don't think they're evil.
Back when I was a kid, I went over to the local chicken farm, he raised about 20000 and part of the job was to collect the young chickens and debeak them along with Rx. If the chickens were not debeak they would peck each other to death or where the chicken had to be destroyed before market.
The worst part of the job was to clean out the chicken barn, there usually was 2ft. of poop that had to shovel out and the dust would cover you real bad and get into the lungs, we use to go to the rock quarry and jump in to get clean and leave a smudge spot of chicken poop on the water, would be coughing out the crap for the next week.
Only did this about 4 times and moved on to a better job, it was one real crap job but for $1.25 per hr wasn't bad.
jjs,
For the experience and the memories, good, bad or indifferent you could not attach a price high enough I would imagine.
The Rock
I have had weasels get into my ducks and kill them. One had just hatched a nest of baby ducks. I caught the weasel with a conibear 110. Also had them get into my pheasants and I caught him with a .410 shotgun. I have also caught weasels in a 00 steel trap. I haven't seen a weasel in years around my place. I had some bob white quail in an elevated pen with one inch chicken wire. The hens would lay eggs in a shoe box. I came home one day and my wife had killed a huge rat snake in the pen. The snake had gone through the wire and ate a quail It then couldn't get out.
Rocky I have nothing against sport hunting... however the weasel should donate the uneaten meat to a raccoon. They eat every freakin bit of what they kill.
Lucky.
Everything eats chicken.
This is my deterrent, vet trip today...
That is one pretty animal right there. He looks as if he would wait for the weasel to have his fun and then go in and eat the weasel first. ;-)
The Rock
My cat Scruff loves to bring me mice (and other rodents)....he just cruises in through the cat door and drops them at my feet...and they don't have a scratch on 'em. For him, he's sharing his greatest treasure with me, and giving me the high honor of dispatching the critter.
Couple years back he comes in the cat door, and he's dragging something; he drops a [thankfully dead] weasel at my feet. Must have been quite a battle, 'cause he had a grin on his face like he'd just pumped the neighbor's dog. Few weeks later, he brought in another one. Haven't seen one since.
Thanks to some trashy neighbors a few doors down, there's a few of these running along the riverbank.
This is what happens when they leave the riverbank.
Mike,
Hmmm.... I am little surprised that your cat is a male. Most times female cats bring their prey home to the their (young)/masters. This is instinctive because females teach their young to hunt and kill and will bring back partially dead (if that is possible) prey for them to finish the job. He looks awful content though like waiting for a treat for his work and it looks like he has not missed many treats. ;-)
The Rock
