Conspiracy Theory

It was early Sunday morning and I was in the barn doing chores. I was about to clean Hank's stall when I noticed something very odd.

There was a tunnel, and it appeared to be linking Hank's stall with Wynonna's. 

Me: Wynonna, have you noticed anything odd recently? Perhaps the earth moving beneath you?

Wynonna: Go away. I'm resting.

I walked further into Wynonna's stall and spied some chicken feathers and miscellaneous detritus 

atop her pig palace. How very odd. The creatures who dug the tunnel apparently left a trail of trash.

I followed the clues and looked in the 6-inch-wide gap between the back of the pig palace and the barn wall.

To my horror, I found the makings of a packrat midden. Eighty bazillion acres of rangeland in New Mexico

and a cussed packrat has to build his/her nest in my barn, behind Wynonna's house and

safely tucked away from my carnivorous chickens. The stinkin' nerve.

As if the presence of the packrat nest weren't enough to push me over the edge, it was filled with piles of chicken feed – 

the high-protein crumbles that cost me upwards of $15 per sack. All winter long I've been thinking the girls 

have been eating a lot. Little did I know they were sharing their meals with a bunch of freeloading vermin.

Of course, the discovery of all the chicken feed behind the pig palace got me to wondering. How did they transport it? 

Surely not one crumble at a time. That's way too much work, even for an unemployed, freeloading packrat.

Here's my theory...

Deep in the middle of the night when the chickens and Wynonna are asleep, the packrats bring in their heavy equipment. 

One of them climbs a ladder to the feeder, then tosses the chicken feed to his buddy below, who is waiting with his wheelbarrow. 

He pushes the wheelbarrow through the tunnel and dumps the feed into the nest. This goes on all night long. 

How Wynonna and the girls sleep through all this activity amazes me. 

I realize this theory doesn't make much sense, but how else would a couple of packrats 

be able to move pounds of chicken feed?

I'm not sure what I'm going to do to resolve this dilemma. 

For now, I've relocated the feeder to inside the coop, which I close every night when I tuck the girls into bed.

The long-term solution would be a barn cat (or two), and I'm just not sure if I could go that route again.

Something to ponder, for sure.