2 am… lightning… strange dogs barking… a chop saw… a flashlight…

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There I was, sound asleep last night in my warm bed next to @mama-pepper. Around 2 am there were dogs barking outside. Barking, barking, and barking. Some of them were the regular sounding, large dog barks. Others, were more like the sounds that dogs make when they are being hurt. That high-pitched yelp was coming just as regularly as the loud barks. Between the two different sounds, it was pretty much constant.

At this point I was thinking that it was one of the neighbor’s dogs. A few of the local dogs are afraid of large storms, so I thought that one may be hiding in the words, terrified and crying out for help. I spent a little time looking out the windows and listening, but all that I could tell from that was that the noises were not coming from by the neighbor’s houses, they were being made in the other direction.

Quietly, I got dressed and grabbed a flashlight. I told @mama-pepper that I was going to go check it out, and went outside. The lightning was flashing continuously and the wind was whipping through the air, though there was no rain.

On the way to investigate, I stopped by the truck and grabbed one of my chop saws. In hindsight, it would have been better for me to grab to a gun.

Once I had the large blade, I started to head behind our dwelling, because that is where the barking and yelping was coming from. Right there, on the other side of an RV was my large rabbit cage. Outside of that rabbit cage, trying to get inside of that rabbit cage, were two large dogs that I had never seen before.

The construction of the cage is very solid, since I built it on top of an old table made out of welded angle iron. This means that it take about three people to move it easily and that the dogs had no real chance of tipping it over. On top of that table is six different cages, each with one rabbit in it.

On one side we had three sisters, Polkadot, Runaway, and Brownie. On the other side were three brothers; our buck Cookie, and two other bucks belonging to the children of @bluerthangreen. The top of that table is made out of iron that is basically like a lattice, so the rabbit manure can fall through it.

Underneath the structure I had mounted an angled piece of metal which slanted into a metal gutter, which then ran down into a 5 gallon bucket. The design could use some improvement, but with the help of a little water from the garden hose, all the manure runs down the gutter into the 5 gallon bucket and makes it easy to use for fertilizer.

Anyway, once I came around the corner and saw the dogs, they took off, thankfully. I was so blessed that these beasts were afraid of me, because I would not want to have to fight two large dogs at once at night with only a chop saw.

I could still hear the dogs in the woods, but they were heading away. Upon investigation, they had torn the gutter off of my rabbit cage. Also, there was some blood on the metal underneath the table. As I continue to inspect the situation, I noticed that one of the other bucks was missing.

When I built the cages, I had never put real tops on them. I used some metal roofing to protect them from the rain, but there was a gap. In that gap I store extra boards, tools, and metal pieces. It looks like in its terror, one of my friends rabbits had made his way out the top.

I’m not sure if the dogs got him, or if he got away. I saw so sign that he died. Even the blood I found could have easily been from the dogs pawing at the metal, so I’m not sure. Perhaps we will see that buck running around sometime soon… perhaps not.

Some of you have already heard me share about the wild hogs around here. There is a chance that these were wild dogs. I saw no collars, and they match the description of a few that have been seen running around in the wild. Obviously, I have no desire to kill anyone’s pet, but if they would have come at me, I would have defended myself.

Hopefully, they will be not be back, but only time will tell. It makes me glad that I build the cages as good as I did, or we would have lost all six of the rabbits in that structure, including the three pregnant does. Also, I can obviously see that I need to fix the top of the cages, just in case it happens again.

Personally, I’m just glad that I didn’t get attacked, and I’ll have to be more careful next time.

FULL STEEM AHEAD!

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