1. New chicken enemy, 2. State of the grass report

1. New chicken enemy

Spotting a snake, on a pitch dark night, inside the coop right next to the sleeping chickens, just as it's trying to swallow a sparrow, still alive and screaming, is not the kind of experience you want to have very often.

Of course you can't leave the snake there and go home. You have to get rid of it, which means a lot of direct, prolonged engagement.

A snake of this size would not dare to attack a chicken, but it would scare her and it would go after eggs. And it would make the whole farm a traumatic place for humans, frightened to walk or enter the coop because there might be a monster lurking in the grass or under the roof.

Snake in the daytime. Pretending to be invisible.

But we are not that naive.

Snake was evicted and weeds around the coop were cut short short very short,
to make the snake comeback harder.

I will skip the details of our first, second and third encounter with this huge, menacing, sparrow-eating creature. No amount of harrowing detail would convey the subjective psychic force of this near-death experience. (I just paraphrased Tim Kreider in "We learn nothing." One of the most relatable books I've ever read.)

I've always considered myself a nature-lover. I used to complain about lack of nature in my everyday life. I will never complain again. The lesson learned in the past few months is that sometimes there can be too much nature around. I admit to my own hypocrisy. When I thought I was a nature-lover, I was just being picky about what kind of 'nature' I preferred: the mountain views and sunlit forests and thundering waterfalls. I'm less enthusiastic about too many and oversized snakes, centipedes, spiders, mosquitoes, egg-stealing crows and dead sparrows. But they are all part of the same set. You can't have one without the other.
So I realized that although I do like nature, I also appreciate the benefits of snake-free lifestyle. And no more dead sparrows, please.

2. State of the grass report

To end on a more positive note, here's an update on the state of the grass. Weeds inside the chickens' run have wildly surpassed our expectations. The farm basically turned into a jungle.

Chicken Jungle

Chickens' playground, July 2016.

For comparison, this is the same place four months ago:

Chickens' playground, March 2016.

Back to now:

Inside (right) and outside (left) of chickens' area.
The weed-trees on the right are 2 m high
(Chenopodium album. Edible weed, by the way.)

You have to look very well to find the chickens. 

If you find any, they will probably be busy dust bathing in the shade. 

Sometimes the rooster would be around.

There are also savannah-like areas, so chickens can choose what kind of terrain they prefer.

Chickens never had this much privacy before. (Nor did the snakes.)
I'm happy for them all.