Caught In The Act

Lately, I have been noticing that I have not been getting my full quota of eggs…9 every day to be exact.  I have nine layers laying at, what I thought, 100%.   Now, I am collecting 8 and sometimes even seven eggs per day.

 

Today, I went to let the hens outside and to collect my daily take of eggs.  I usually stroke the backs of a few of the hens as they gather around my feet.  They were acting normal.  As I opened the little hinged door and all the chickens exited to their outside run, a foul smell came over me.  Now, that was not normal.

 

I turned to collect the eggs out of the nesting boxes and was startled by a face to face encounter with a black rat snake inside two of the boxes.  Yes, two of the boxes.  His rear end length was looped around the inside of one of the compartments and his head end was in the adjacent box.  Evidently there is enough of a space between the narrow board wall separating the two cubicles for the snake to slither through. I did not think so. But, I am not about to argue with a very long and very ugly snake.

 

The snake had its mouth wide and halfway around an egg.  I was not going to gather that egg, but I quickly collected the eggs out of the other nests.  I did not want that snake stealing yet another egg.  After all, I had no idea how many eggs one snake can manage to ingest at a single meal. And, here I thought my hens were being lazy.  Silly me. Then, I ran for my camera.

 

Hey, that's my egg you just swallowed!

By the time I returned, the snake had swallowed his egg, whole.  As I watched, he glided up and over the top of the dividing wall, which was still hidden from my direct sight, and the snake was now comfortably and totally in the end box.  How did that egg, encased in the snake, get through the slit of an opening? Well, I was not about to investigate further at this point in time.

 

The snake stared at me.  And, I stared at the snake.  The snake won.

 

I left the chicken house.  I have no idea what happened to the snake.

 

And, that fact is a bit disconcerting for my future and very regular hen house visits.