At midnight, one week before my wedding, the panicked shriek of a chicken pierced my dreams and I immediately sat up in bed. Not yet fully awake, but noticing my fiancé was not beside me, I said something along the lines of, “Kevin, can you go outside right now? The chickens …”
At the other end of our small home, Kevin was off the couch and outside before I could gather any more words. Barely awake himself, he set out with only his cell phone flashlight, even though we keep headlamps by the front door.
Grabbing a shovel on his way around to the chicken coop, Kevin shined the dim light of his phone into the darkness, trying to illuminate whatever was lurking there.
We’ve had encounters with wild predators before. I think often of a time, deep in winter, a couple of years ago. I found myself slamming a glass door to scare off a mountain lion that had my geriatric dog pinned to the back deck. Ironically, I had submitted an application earlier that day to an internship focused on wildlife conflict prevention. My error that winter — complacency — led to a late-night trip to Spokane and a couple thousand dollars in emergency vet bills. I was lucky it didn’t cost me my dog.
Coop vigilance is a constant necessity in the Methow.
Our coop had been opened like a can of sardines, the nest boxes ripped off the side of the little wooden shack, exposing the chicken nuggets inside. Using a brighter flashlight and viewing the scene through his phone’s camera, Kevin could see a pair of shining eyes in the aspens, the silhouette of a black bear looking back at him.
I joined him outside and we patched up the coop with plywood and screws, the birds inside already trying to go back to sleep. Before we went back to bed, we made loud noises at the bear until they retreated off the property.
In the morning, we learned that our lack of preparedness this time had cost us one chicken. Our coop, mostly a free bulletin board score, has buried wire to prevent digging in, and netting over the run to prevent predation from the sky, but we hadn’t accounted for the fact that bears are happy to tear things apart to access food. Education and support resources about bears, such as the Methow Bear Coalition website, list chicken coops first as common bear attractants and sources of conflict with humans.
We value bears and other wild predators as community members with important roles, so keeping them out of trouble is a similar responsibility to the training and management of our new puppy. We also owe protection to our domesticated companions and livestock. Fortunately, there is an electric fence cost-share program for bear management in the valley through Defenders of Wildlife.
With rapid support from Madelyn Hamilton (wildlife recreation coexistence program coordinator for Conservation Northwest), and Kristin Botzet (Northwest field program representative for Defenders of Wildlife), we borrowed and installed a temporary electric fence the morning after the chicken coop breach. We haven’t had any issues since, even when we left everything largely unattended for a few days to go get married in Oregon. To learn more about bear fencing and other local programs, visit www.methowbearcoalition.org/ programs.
