Date Night - Farmer Style

We've been losing chickens to an unknown predator recently. One morning, we found a carcass in the barnyard. On Mother's Day, we found three. It would've been bad enough had it been some of our adult, egg-laying hens, but these were young chickens we've bought especially to sell for meat. Having local wildlife get an occasional snack is a farmer's occupational hazard but this is a threat on our livelihood and completely unacceptable to my hard-working husband. So he decided to sit up on a stakeout.

Now, my husband is a very experienced hunter, and an expert marksman, but his original idea of sitting out all night on top of a ladder propped up against a tree with a spotlight in one hand and a shotgun in the other wasn't sounding like one of his better plans, so I made a suggestion. Why not put the pick-up truck in an ideal location and sit in the bed of it? What's more, why not let me handle the spotlight?

You gotta love when a plan comes together.

So, there we were...sitting in the dark in the bed of the truck, parked on top of a pile of turkey manure to mask our scent, trying to hold still and keep quiet while getting buzz-bombed by insects, and straining our ears to distinguish the difference between normal night sounds and the approach of a hungry animal when I realized that this was the first time since I don't know when that we've been out of the house after sundown without children and that apparently this is the best I can hope for in terms of getting a date night with my husband.

Not really the kind of romantic evening I'd hope for, but in my life I've learned to take what I can get.