You have to have a pretty sharp eye, but there are actually three hens attacking the rooster, who, in desperation, has tried to dig himself right into the ground. This is most annoying, since he does this quite often right next to one of the supporting beams of the hermitage (upper-left corner of the picture), threatening to destabilize the hermitage. I’ve put some rocks and boards there to dissuade him from such excavations. He has a whole forest in which to do this. Meanwhile, the hens are, I suppose, eating spiders and other yummy items from his feathers.
Meanwhile, Laudie-dog is looking mighty content after a few minutes of being awake and realizing that she is safe inside the hermitage under the warm wood-stove and in the company of yours truly, the trusty dog-food provider. Actually, there’s more to it than that…
Laudie-dog has been having frequent, quite severe nightmares after the incident of a zombie intruder into the environs of the hermitage the other night. She was scared to death for both herself and myself. Yikes!
I’m happy to have Laudie-dog to ward off monstrosities. But if it’s actually the one I think it is, he would, now and again, be visited by pretty much the entire fleet of law enforcement cruisers in this region. But now he knows that he’s been seen. So, I don’t think he’ll be back.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
