Sad Day on the Farm

It was a sad day here yesterday. Thursday night two of our geese were killed by coyotes. Normally the geese and duck stay close to the house overnight, but the last two years during spring they have been sleeping in the field (about 500 ft from the house) where water builds up from the snow melting.

Hubby noticed that the duck was with Gooser which was odd because he never left Pip Squeak's side (the African, or tan one below). It was odd but they had some little love affair going on. So hubby looked for them for over 2 hours (they can cover a lot of ground in a short period of time). He finally went over near the water hole and found feathers and blood from Pip Squeak on one side of the water hole and Crabby's body (without head & neck) on the opposite side. You could see all the coyote prints in the mud. When those hunters told us in January about all the coyotes in the area, I had a feeling something like this would happen.

Hubby is pretty bummed out because Pip Squeak was his favorite. She would honk when you called her. She was probably 5-6 years old. He was hoping she'd be around for several more years. Crabby was only 2 years old. Gooser is the oldest at about 6-7 years.

I didn't sleep very good last night worrying that Gooser and/or the duck would go back out there after dark. Thankfully they're both still here this morning. Hopefully it'll stay that way.