Girl 1 has been obsessed with Nancy Drew books lately. So, naturally, when we discovered the dead chickens in the coop, her first question was "What would Nancy Drew do?" She then proceeded to gather evidence.

The first thing we noticed was that Milkshake appeared to be injured. She was hobbling around on 3 legs and had some blood on her nose. In the time she's lived here, this kind of thing had never happened before. The chicken murder and Milkshake injury seemed to be linked somehow. But how?

The intruder had pulled back the chicken wire from the door frame and snuck in.

A close examination of the wire revealed some hair/fur that had gotten snagged on the wire at the point of entry.

It measured about 3 inches long and appeared to be a blonde, reddish color.

This was the evidence we needed to declare Milkshake a victim rather than the perpetrator. Her similarly colored fur is only about 1 inch long. Whew!!!

Could the opossum we've had hanging around here be to blame? That's not likely since we know this attack occurred during daylight: sometime between when John fed the chickens in the morning and when the kids went outside after dinner.

Our conclusion: we had a fox in the henhouse.

That's pretty good detective work, I'd say.

Now, how do we protect our hens from a repeat invasion?