Looking toward Lake Sunapee and Mt. Kearsarge, by James AuBuchon
Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, a wry exchange, a poem or anecdote or reflection… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and that might strike us all as interesting or funny or poignant.
Want to submit your own Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!
Just a single Dear Daybreak item today, since it’s a bit on the long side.
Dear Daybreak:
Every once in a while an event occurs that has more meaning then the event itself. My husband and I have a saying, “Don’t look up.” It stems from a painter who underestimated his job then did a lousy job on our ceilings because he felt under-paid, When I complained, he said, “Don’t look up”. So whenever we have a bad situation, we say, “Don’t look up.”
Now we’ve got a new saying: “Take your shoes off.” Here is why…
Jeff and I live in rural Hanover on 32 acres. I was raised in Miami, Jeff in Manhattan. We moved to rural Hanover in 2006 and have learned so much since moving here. I have learned to garden and to grow quite a bit of our food. I have learned to can and make pickles, jam, and so much more. I can make pie with the best of them and even earned some ribbons at the Cornish Fair for my needlework and knitting!
I’ve also raised chickens from chicks, added pullets to an existing flock (which is not easy) and sent my chickens to the farmer for slaughter (I gave them to him, I could not eat them). A recent spring, after the winter off, I got 17 new chicks. They were raised in the garage for 5 weeks and entered a clean coop and fenced-in area in early July.
They were looking good—especially after they grew out of their dinosaur stage and appeared to be small chickens. They were about 9 weeks old when we came back from a short trip. Our neighbor had taken care of them while we were away, and it all went well. Until it didn’t.
Monday morning I got up and was getting ready for work. There were a few strawberry tops to give the girls, so I walked outside and watched a chicken run across my path…" “What the hell are they doing out?” I wondered. I looked over at the coop and the door was wide open and the chickens were scattered across the lawn.
When I got to the coop, I noticed the hook and eye were destroyed and the door was lopsided. I counted 14 chickens. There should have been 17, but I had to go to work. So I shooed them into the pen and shut the door, then left a note for my husband. When he eventually called, I told him I thought a bear had broken into the coop and eaten a five-gallon container of food. And three chickens were missing.
I spent the day discussing bears with anyone I can find. My husband bought a new lock for the door, along with three very sturdy hooks and eyes. He also locked the gate to the pen part of the coop with a bicycle lock. After I got home, I wandered the yard and found a pile of feathers by my garden… and then a second pile of feathers with some innards. Now I am very upset, especially after I found the final pile of feathers. But we go to sleep feeling confident the chickens are safe in their newly secured coop.
You probably know what’s coming. The next morning the coop was wrecked, the batten was off, a wooden chicken decoration had been broken. But thankfully, the door held as well as the pen gate, and all the windows were intact. Fourteen chickens were still present and accounted for. And petrified! But we knew this could not not go on every night.
So that morning I called NH Fish & Game. They confirmed bears were very active that year and that we were just one among many folks with issues. My neighbor told me a bear had broken into her garage the same night he could not get into our coop and just wrecked it, looking through the garbage.
The wildlife folks recommended an electric fence. So my husband went to the local feed store and bought one. We hired someone to install it. He was recommended by the feed store and came right away. He did a great job, and four hours later, we were electrified!
We’d been told to wrap some bacon to entice the bear to bite the fence; the current would hurt and scare him off forever. I quizzed our handyman about the fence and he showed me how it worked and how strong the fence was on a tester. I was sufficiently scared. I did not touch it. We haven’t seen the bear since—which was great but I was never really sure if the fence was working.
I tried to touch it a few times and felt very little, just a pulsing little prickle, which convinced me the fence was not working right. When I called a friend who has livestock, he said to beware, his fence had knocked him to the ground several times. I figured ours was shorting out, so I cleaned the leaves on the ground around the bottom of the fence, weed whacked, and still the current was weak. I was determined to save my chickens from the bear, so I called our handyman to discuss the fence.
He asked me what I was wearing when I touched the fence. I told him “clothes.” He said, “No, for shoes.” “Oh!” I said. “Crocs.” He told me to take my shoes off and touch the fence. I put my phone down and did what he said….
Turns out I’d been grounded when I touched the fence all those times before. Well, when I got up off the ground from the shock that ran up my arm and sent me flying back, I said to him, “Fence is fine” He laughed.
Eventually, so did I.
Sometimes, learning about rural life is painful but now you can appreciate what we go through. This happened some years back, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. And let me leave you with a friendly warning: Beware if anyone ever recommends that you ”take your shoes off”!
— Lisa Silbert, Hanover
