The Heroic Chicken Named Cow

We've been chicken owners for over a few years now.  We started out with 5 chickens at our old house and when we moved to a house with more acreage, we kept adding more to our flock and I think we topped out near 20.  Every year, we kept adding more baby chicks, one new chick per kid adds up quick.  We usually loose some to hawks every fall, but that wasn't a huge deal, since we owned many.  Fast forward to this spring when we added our yearly new baby chicks. 
We get our new chicks from TSC or Family Farm and Home, it just depends on who has better selection.  This year we went for the Bantams (pretty little yard chickens) and 2 Americana's (they lay pretty blue or green eggs).  The kids get to name them, so this year we added chickens named, Dandelion, Candy, Pecky Leg, Skid steer, and Excavator (the twins named the heavy equipment names. Yes, they are their father's sons).  In the beginning they live in the garage in a box, and then as they grow we transfer them to a smaller coop, away from the bigger chickens, until their big enough to join them.  We've never had a problem in the past doing this, but then again the twins didn't play with them as much as this year either.  About a month ago, the kids came to tell me that one of the new chicks was dead.  Sure enough, she was dead in the coop.  The next day, they came to tell me that all the new chicks were dead.  Sure enough, they were.  A small window door on the top of the coop was left open, so that s how we thought that the chicken killer got in.  We didn't know exactly what critter was getting in there, but something was having some good chicken dinners.

Fast forward to this week, something was now getting our full grown chickens.  One here, one there, everyday there was a new chicken death to report.  Some of them were chickens we've had for a few years. 

The other night, Ross and I were watching TV in our basement family room.  We were just about to head to bed when we heard thunk, thunk, tap,tap, on our slider window.  We didn't know what animal would make this noise.  So Ross and I got up to look, and who was it?!?!  The chicken named Cow!!!!!!  It kept tapping the window and looking at us.  She was probably thinking, "come on you humans!"  As we open the slider we could hear squawking.  If you don't know much about chickens, chickens settle down for the night at dusk and they don't usually make any noise.  They perch in their coop and don't normally wander around the yard like Cow was.  We knew the chicken killer was out there.  Ross quickly got his gun and ran out to the coop.  I stood in the basement and watched through the window.  Sure enough, Ross was firing shots at whatever was in there.  When he got back to the house, he told me it was a big fat raccoon.  The raccoon ate 3 chickens and when Ross shot him, he was so busy eating eggs, he didn't even move when Ross opened the door.  Those poor chickens were squawking for quite a bit after the whole incident, it took them awhile to settle down again.

Chickens are known to not be very smart, but as you can see in this case, I beg to differ.  If it hadn't been for Cow warning us, we could have very well easily lost all of our chickens.  The next morning, to celebrate Cow's acts of  heroism, Leanne brought her up on our deck, and we gave her a strawberry.  Such a good and brave chicken!!!!