Good with the bad, I guess...

It had been raining absolutely unendingly for the morning.  I had taken a break, reading, and some knitting.  Husband had been dozing, with Ding holding him down... Also dozing.

Husband woke, and we were chatting a bit.  I stood up, to go into the other room, while he was talking... And I guess my face showed my shock.  He finished his sentence, then looked at me curiously, "What's wrong?"

"There is an eagle out in the field, eating one of my chickens.."

He stopped... "An eagle?"

"Yeah, an eagle, right there..."

We both looked out the window, to the sight of this ENORMOUS eagle, obviously a big adult bald eagle, calmly tearing apart one of my hens.  Well, there was not much I could do.

We tried to take a picture or two, but my camera was... Not at its best, and between the blasted flash being on, making it a big glare on the window.  And the zoom, just wasn't zoomy enough to get a good picture, we just had to be satisfied watching it for a bit.  Or, unsatisfied, as it were...

Finally the eagle left, and I went out to see what happened.  I am still not sure why, but the hen was plucked nearly clean.  It was one of the young ones, and it looked like someone had set a bomb off in a feather pillow.  I managed to get her picked up and buried, which was fun, in and of itself, since it started raining again.  That made the hole fill with water, which was not great.  I also had to use a feed shovel to dig the hole, because I couldn't find the standard shovel.  But, I did get it taken care of.  The rest of the flock were fine, if rightly terrified.  I noticed Mon Ami was pacing, and looked like he wasn't hurt, but maybe wasn't sure if he should go out and challenge the intruder.  Glad he didn't. 

So, while I had a wonderful close up view, I truly wish it had been of a fly by, not a stop and eat...