BIG Black Snake in the Hen House

After relocating our black snake to Noah and Betty's house last Sunday I was expecting egg numbers to go up.  But they didn't.  In fact, a couple of days this week I found only a couple of eggs.  And the hens have been laying all over the hen house, rarely in the nesting boxes.  Something's up.

This morning I removed the barrier that separated the two young chickens from the older hens.  Lessons in pecking order were the order of the day!  At least the two little ones have each other.

Later in the day I went out to check on how everyone was getting along.  I didn't see the young chickens, and thought they might have been bullied into the hen house.  Imagine my surprise, when I opened the door and found two of the old hens in the corner under the roosting perches, busily pecking at a HUGE black snake!  He was at least 5 feet long, and he was fat ... obviously, very well fed.

I ran to the workshop to tell Rouse, "Giant black snake in the hen house!"  Then I ran into the house to get a paper grocery bag and my handy-dandy grabber device.  Rouse grabbed the snake by the tail and threw him out of the hen house into the yard.  Yikes!  The snake immediately assumed an aggressive offensive posture.  He was not about to be caught!  But under my superior supervisory skills ... and with a little distance provided by my handy-dandy grabber ... Rouse bagged the snake.  My hero!!  We relocated him to a patch of woods on the other side of the 64 bypass.  He'll have to make it across four lanes of traffic if he wants to come back to this eating establishment.