A Mystery Solved

    Yesterday morning I walked into the red barn and saw this.  GAK - It's a pile of feathers and hay!  I was confused.  I was upset.  I know I did a final chicken count the night before when the coops were closed up and all were there.  I couldn't believe I would have missed seeing a naked chicken on the roost.  It looked like a chicken exploded all over the floor.  I wondered if this is what happens when a chicken has to sneeze and holds it in instead.
    All day that scene in the red barn bothered me.  I just couldn't figure out what had happened...
    Then later in the evening I went out to the red barn and further investigated the situation.  When I took a close look, which meant scooting the pile of feathers around with my foot in hopes of not finding a mouse nest, I saw it was a variety of chicken breed feathers.   Something had been collecting them.  They were also all lumped together with bits of straw, hay, and twigs.  Hmmmmm.  Where could it have come from?!  I looked up...
    There it was.  Mystery solved...sort of.  Way up by the roof of the barn there's a Barn Swallow nest.  It's made out of mud, straw/hay, and feathers.  Now that other part below it, where I'm going to have to assume the mangled feather mess came from, is another nest.  I have no idea what made it, but am going to have to assume it's also some sort of bird nest.  Of course, in my dreams it's some beastly beast with super climbing and flying capabilities that made a nest right under the Barn Swallow one because it has some devious plan of swallowing the Swallows...but that was just a dream...or was it?  Hmmmmm...imaginations can be such fun!                                                              Smiling & Waving, Sharon

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