What a Day

I got up today at 7am like I always do. Went outside praying to see the missing turkeys and sadly no Mork. Went down to check the Muscovy ducks at the pond and found the one babe, Licorice was frozen to the ice on the pond, in the middle of the pond! Oh no! Somehow his tail feathers had completely frozen to the ice and he couldn't move. The ice is not very thick, not thick enough to support a human, so sadly we could not walk across it. The best we could do with wade in, breaking the ice in front of us as we went. It was so cold! and such exhausting work! The ice did not break easily. We made it out to the poor duck and broke the ice around him. Unfortunately he ended up losing half his tail :( Poor guy, We grabbed him up and literally with waded back to shore. We wrapped him in a towel and got to the house as quick as possible. After about ten minutes in the house Licorice started to come around and was able to walk again! about ten minutes after that we were able to get him back to his moms. What a scary experience!

We were frozen. We had hot showers and baths, but were still shivering. We got banged and cut up from the ice. I had 10am work which I cancelled as I was so cold and exhausted.

We spent the rest of the morning inside, getting warmed up and working online. I'm working on a new art design. Spent about 3 hours working on it when the hydro flashed off, good-bye art. :( sadly, art programs don't save art the way most writing programs do.

Went out in the afternoon and hunted for the missing turkey. Still can't find a sign of him. No blood, no feathers nothing.

At 5pm, when we went to put the featherbabies away, we were missing one leghorn chicken. Oh no!

I can only surmise that a missing turkey yesterday and a missing hen today means a predator. Both birds tend to hang on the edge of the woods at the back of the house. But what type of predator? It's gotta be something big enough to carry off a turkey and fast enough to get them without any fight.

Tomorrow, we will be out first things hunting for the missing hen and signs of the missing turkey. We gotta act quickly before we lose anymore.

I'm looking into getting a live trap, so I can get a trap down quickly encase it is a predator.

Fingers crossed that both the hen and turkey show up tomorrow!