Combination shed and coop. Therefore, “shoop.” It’s actually the first frame building I have ever built from the ground up (if you don’t count the wood shed, which as I’ve mentioned I’ll have to rebuild this spring. Too small). It’s 8 feet square with a pitched metal roof, a back window and a front door. It cost me about $250 to build; the roofing and front door came from the neighbors when he tore down an old building. The shoop is full of shelving for tools and has a built-in box, accessible from the top and from the outside, that serves as an indoor shelter for the ducks. They go in at night and we send one of the kids down to shut them in. We had a bear pull the back of the shoop off last year when it was still being built, but we never lost a duck until Honey’s escapades began.

(If you’re wondering, I never did discipline Honey last night. Child 1 had a band concert at the high school, we got home at twilight, the ducks were already put to bed, I had to help Beautiful with the squalling baby and toddler [they both have colds right now] while she made dinner, and well, we never got the dog down for her duck lessons. That will have to happen Saturday. If it does then. Meanwhile Beautiful has stood up sections of OSB at the low sections of duck fence; the other sections already have a “moat” in the snow around them which she and Child 1 dug a couple of weeks ago. Hope she has time today to show Honey right from wrong.)

The bear was an interesting escapade. Something bigger than a raccoon or skunk had been getting into our trash for weeks last summer (we had moved in on April 30th). There were scrapes and punctures on our garbage can lids, but we had other things to tend to until the morning when, through our open windows, I heard frantic quacking down at the shoop. I bolted out of bed and called Hank (we didn’t have Honey yet). As we ran down to the shoop I heard something big crashing away in the brush. I sent Hank after it and went down to see the damage. When I opened the shoop door I gasped (a family weakness but I don’t do it very often): The entire back wall of the shoop was gone! It was all daylight and trees instead of a half wall. Well, I’d tacked up the bottom half of the back wall using roofing nails, which are short and smooth, because they were what I had at hand and I didn’t want to go searching for something substantial. (Impatience with inanimate objects is a critical weakness which I am now working on.) I found bear prints along two walls of the shoop, which told me he had been investigating the duck smell, put his front paws up on that half wall, and pulled it down, because those short nails did not hold it firm. I think he also stepped on those pointy nails once the wall was down, and that’s when the quacking started. The pain in his feet and our running down the hill toward him is what scared him off. Not one duck was missing.

Last fall, two bears were shot near our road. We haven’t seen a trace of live bear since. Though we do have bear feet! That’s another entry.