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the dad in the family would get a gun and do his best to blast the thing to smithereens. Not the ‘greenest’ approach, for sure, but that’s the way it was. We all had some laying hens and a few fryers, and the chicken hawks would get one now and then. There was no shortage of hawks, despite the actions of the chicken owners.
Then, sometime after that, it became illegal to shoot a hawk. Or, perhaps it had always been illegal to shoot a hawk, and word of that just took a while to reach Rappahannock. I think that is a federal law. Either way, it didn’t stop a lot of folks, but it slowed them down some, and now, no one has chickens, anyway, so, we have hawks everywhere. Tbo many of them, if you ask some folks.
In our little abode here in Flint Hill, the previous owner converted a car port to a family room. (Oops, hope the assessors don’t read that!) Anyway, that room has a lot of windows. And, just outside, we have several bird feeders. We love to watch the birds. But, there is a problem. The hawks like to eat, too, and that’s just nature’s way. But, for every bird they catch on our bird feeders, several more die a quick death as they try to fly through the windows when the red tail hawk makes his dive.
We have put up little cutouts of birds and other stuff on the windows, but it does not appear to have helped much. The hawks are eveiywhere. I wish they liked the cats that people let run loose. That would solve two problems.
Four-legged hawks
And foxes. Have you ever seen so many foxes? Again, when I was a kid, you handled the problem of losing the occasional chicken by shooting every fox you saw. And there was no shortage of foxes. Some people . even trapped them for the fifty cents or dollar they got for the hide. Seems to me, they were all gray. Also, there was this sometimes-real-mostly-imagined fear of rabies, so you didn’t take any chances. You shot every fox you saw. For better or worse, that’s how the situation was handled. That’s just the way it was. And there was no shortage of foxes.
Then, some people started bringing foxes into the county and turning them loose. As I recall, they were all red foxes. Some people argued that this was not a good thing to do, but their concerns were dismissed. And then, the game and fish people in Richmond changed the rules and made it
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