Don't let the chickens out, Tom! It does not get very cold for many winters here but occasionally we have a brutally cold one. Once when I was a girl we had one of those really bad winters where the ground froze. As night grew near I went to shut up the chicken house. The chickens were not there. I hunted and found them silhouetted against the darkening sky roosting in a bare tree. The were Rhode Island Reds so I do not know how they managed to get so high up in the tree. I knew critters would climb the tree and get them so there I was, just a small thing, with a long cane fishing pole poking the chickens out of the tree. As they would sail down to the dark ground I would pick them up and put them on the roost poles in the chicken house. I got all but the two that were too high for me and the cane pole...... those two did not survive the critters that night. It was a puzzle to me why of all nights ALL of the chickens would decide to roost in a tree????
