Animals in Unexpected Places...

On Friday morning I went out to do chores, as usual.  The horses had spent the night outside, and as I walked by their empty stalls I was fairly certain I heard a fluttering of wings shoot past me above in the hay loft.  Immediately pushing the thoughts of the Mothman into the back of my head, I climbed up the ladder to the hayloft and found nothing but hay, so I threw some down to the horses in the pasture.  I climbed back down the ladder and went on into the tack room where I keep their grain.  As I bent down to scoop up some grain, I heard a scurrying in the metal bin where I keep alfalfa cubes.  The bin is empty now (or at least was the night before) because we now have better hay, and I stood up, looked at the closed metal bin and seriously contemplated going back to the house to get Guinness and stick him in the bin until he caught, what I was certain, was a mouse.  After a few seconds of pondering what I would do, I decided I had better take off the lid to be sure it was a mouse that was scuddling around.  Now, living in the country there could be a myriad of miscriants that get into your things including opossums, raccoons, and skunks (which hadn't crossed my mind until I mentioned this story to my dad, and he mentioned skunks).  If I had thought about this earlier this morning, I probably would have had Casey check it out.  That's love, right?  As I opened the lid and peered inside, expecting a mouse, I was surprised to see a feathery brown creature. "Beatrice!" I exclaimed, shocked, "How did you get in here???" I asked her as I bent down to pick her up.  Beatrice is one of our chickens.  How she managed to get into that closed metal can, and close the lid again remains a mystery...I guess that's what I get for not counting the chickens when I closed up the night before...