Baby chickens the night before the raccoons slaughtered them.

Baby Chickens found slaughtered all over the yard in Springfield Ohio.Chikin Scratch Note: Eat More Raccoon

A chicken-scratch note appeared to say, "Eat More Raccoon".

Upon further investigation it was found that raccoons are edible to us too! (Yandex said it).

Lesson Learned by Kenny Hendrick

Three years of living outdoors has brought more than a few lessons.

On year three, along came this lesson:

Where I live, there seems to be no mice whatsoever, not even in the chicken coop; 'cept for once.

One day, it was witnessed that a mouse was seen in there, and not just one!

What tipped me off was the amount of chicken food that was being consumed.

At the time, my mom just happened to be up here visiting (she stayed in the house of course),
and her answer for all living creatures is to kill them.

At first I was against the idea.

However, not too many days went by before it became too shocking to see so many rodents bravely disregarding my presence.

I stood and witnessed the tiny things running back and forth to the chicken food, and thought of the feces they must leave behind.

Considering the larger danger, that the rodents could get my birds sick, it was not long before the mice or moles (or whatever those tiny things were), had to go!

It was decided to kill them.

Problem solved

.

The mice were definitely gone almost overnight, they all seemed to like the poison better than the chicken food
(go figure).

However, a week or so later I saw one in the other garage, I refer to the other garage as my lab.

Mom's words echoed when I found a bag of my rice had been breached.

Kill it!

Again, the bait worked miraculously overnight!

Must be some great stuff if you're a mouse. The stuff comes in a small green brick that you leave out for them.

Enter a new lesson:

A few days or so later, it began to smell of death around here.

It's kind of country here so things are dying all the time. This time the death was persistent.

I kept the fan on, and left the door open to funnel the smell back outdoors, but the smell was overwhelming.

***Before I go too far into this story, it may not have been the mouse that I smelled, as it was much later discovered that a rabbit was decayed just under my window. I couldn't see it because there's a ton of rocks and weeds and a fence there.

Anyway, go with the story as it appeared at the time.

Here's where it became a life-death scenario.

For anybody that doesn't know, when something dies maggots take over and turn into flies. That's not the revolutionary part; what those flies can do is what's revolutionary (for me anyway).

I began to find flies in my coffee, around my food, they were everywhere.
So I dealt with the fly problem by buying an insect netting and placed it around the thing I call a bed (the flies didn't make good bed-fellows).

I also convinced myself and attributed this new phenomenon of flies as an isolated seasonal occurrence, and even further convinced myself that the annoying pesky flies were simply God's Little Ticklers, and that I ought to get along with a pest that only has a lifespan of 30 days

In short, I made peace with the flies.
How much can a fly possibly eat, anyway?

A few days later I was made very cognitive of the fact that I had drank quite a few flies in the leftover coffee. I remember trying to place what I was swallowing.
The coffee was in the cup from the night before.
Seeing a few still bobbing around in the large coffee cup and still chewing, it was clear that this was not a cookie because I did not have any cookies the night before.

Before long I began shivering and sweating at the same time.
I had diarrhea and vomiting simultaneously.
And since I've had pneumonia quite seriously before, it was quickly realized that amongst the signs of sickness, that the mucous-filled lungs and nausea I felt, were clear indicators of an interesting week to come.

I felt as though I were dying, but kept myself hydrated with the vegetable and fruits that were pureed and frozen in the freezer.

Days of Woozie later...

The short version of this story is not that Thou Shalt Not Kill, but rather the notion that God's little ticklers (flies) can really cause some serious problems if they land on your food, or fall into your mouth when you're sleeping (and the such).

During this plague, it was not uncommon that I could count 20 flies within a blind-eye's view.

Again echoed my mom's words:

"Kill them"!

So Off to work I went.

I tried making fly traps made with a couple of plastic bottles holding a piece of rotting meat and honey inside
(and almost caught one, but when I unscrewed the cap of the upright jug, it flew out).

I also tried making those extremely messy sugar and corn syrup things as found on YouTube. One internet site stated honey could replace corn syrup, so I used honey since no corn syrup could be found...

These fly catchers were not working for me at all. The only reason that the more than a half-dozen fly strips caught one was because of a lucky swat-and-squish tactic.

I had fully recovered rather quickly (maybe a week), but still was battling the fly problem.

Since there's an abundance of D.E. here (Diatomaceous Earth), I began to set this everywhere, hoping it would eradicate the buzzing pests
(that carry over 200 diseases, according to
yandex.com
.

D.E. had worked in so many other applications in the past, but of that which was distributed around, wasn't working fast enough.

Counting the incessant non-monogamous over-sexing that was going on,

The flies were multiplying.

Ultimately I broke down

and went to Google-Express

and ordered a couple of these babies:

Captivator Fly Trap 100520214,

$8.99

2qty = $17.98

This new method would now enable me to peer right into their ridiculous eyes as God's little ticklers gasped their last.

The fly traps really work as well as everybody says.

One would have been enough, but two were purchased and both were utilized indoors (despite the warning stating to use outdoors only).

So the moral of this story is not that it's sheer luck that we even survive beyond 30 years of age,
but rather the lesson is to never jump to conclusions.

Why is that the lesson?

Well, before I put the puzzle together as to what had made me so sick, a visitor had come from New York to purchase a computer from me.

He offered some Deer Meat, and left with the trailing words that the meat was over a year old.

I thought nothing of the age, and the meat was extremely tasty without the fat that we are accustomed to in Cow Meat.

Since the meat was consumed a couple of days before I was made sick, and since I had all but forgotten about the dead rodent (and was clueless of the much larger rabbit decaying outside my window), I blamed the meat from the generous customer.

So not jumping to conclusions (especially when you are sick), is important.

Jumping to conclusions will have you assassinating the character and motives of others in your thoughts,
and missing the potential world of other possibilities...

even something as insidiously small as a dead rodent.

*First Appeared on https://springfield-ohio-post.com