Have you ever heard a chicken screaming? If you are sleeping deeply it almost sounds like a person. As soon as I woke up, I knew it was the Girls. Poor Girls.

Tragedy struck last night, in the form of a Raccoon of Mass Destruction (RMD). I lost Phoebe, Penny, and The Duchess. Phoebe was one of my first chickens, and both of her sisters were already long gone. The Duchess was also acquired in the first year I got chickens and was half grown. She raised up Penny and Marzipan this spring after they got too big for the broody box.

I ran out into the yard and saw it, lurking by the skeletonized sunflowers. I picked up one of Frannie’s backyard buckets and hurled it at the foul creature, and somehow I hit it. Marzipan was running around freaking out, and immediately plumped herself into the corner of the yard next to the fence. Chickens have good instincts at night; they will make a lot of noise and then disappear suddenly, making themselves very small.

Mr. Husband was right behind me with the flashlight. He did a sweep of the yard and found Penny and The Duchess, with their throats ripped out. Phoebe is still MIA, but was so tiny that I’m sure she’s long gone. We were too bitter to let the raccoon take the bodies of the Girls, so Mr. Husband dug a quick hole and we gave them a proper send-off. I eulogized while Mr. Husband dug.

“Oh, Penny,” I said. “She was such a good chicken. She actually had a personality. She ate out of my hand. She let me carry her around. She followed me all over the yard.” I had peeped into the chookhouse a couple of minutes earlier when I picked up Marzipan, the shy chicken, and popped her in. I shone the light and saw that only Jeckle was left in there, tiny and cowering. That meant Heckle was also missing. “Now I am left with only a shy chicken and a personality-less chicken,” I lamented to Mr. Husband.

“Perhaps they will grow personalities to fill the vacuum,” said Mr. Husband.

I could see the raccoon hanging on the neighbor’s fence, just feet away, as I was holding the funeral. He was watching what we were doing with a great deal of interest.

“If I had a gun I would shoot it,” I said. “I’ve never had the desire to shoot anything before, not really.”

“I would shoot him, too,” said Mr. Husband.

A couple of hours later my alarm went off. The sun came up and I heard a surprising sound: BOCK BOCK BOCK, right outside my window. It was Heckle, standing all alone in the yard, wondering where her homies were and why she had been locked out while everyone else had been locked in.

I was very glad to see her. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous to have a Jeckle without a Heckle. It’s like salt without pepper…or hot tubs without jiggly bikini girls. It just shouldn’t happen. I unlocked the chookhouse door and Heckle called Marzipan and Jeckle out. It will take a while for their poor chookie brains to get over this one, so they will probably be rattled…until about noon tomorrow or so.

For my last couple of hours of sleep I kept having the same dream about the Girls freaking out, and I would run out the back door only to discover that the raccoon was there, large and vicious, and I couldn’t shut the door on it. Yuck.