An uninvited visitor entered, closed the door behind him, ruffled feathers for hours, left one hen dead, and left the scene flying. The guest was a falcon and his victim, Fréttablaðið reports, had no name. The invasion took place at the henhouse of the farm Stórhóll in Vestur-Húnavatnssýsla county, North Iceland. When Maríanna Eva Ragnarsdóttir, farmer at Stórhóll, entered, the rest of the residents fled.
“Something major had clearly been going on,” Maríanna said. “She was all torn to pieces, her breast had been devoured and her feathers plucked. Nothing was left but feathers all over the place.” Maríanna is surprised the falcon killed only one hen. “The rooster was inside, so the question is whether he was able to defend them to some extent.”
She and her son decided to try to chase the suspect out to bring peace back to the henhouse. “He wasn’t going to get out. We had a broom and tried to chase him out. But then things didn’t look good and I thought he would charge at us. I decided to leave the henhouse open and let him fly out on his own.” The plan worked and the criminal flew away.
“I’ve had a mink enter the henhouse and it has killed everything it caught,” Maríanna added, “so I thought this could have been a lot worse.”
Stórhóll is a farm with 650 sheep and almost 20 hens.
