our new alarm clock

Last week I woke up around 5:30am to a chicken making strange noises not far from our bedroom window. I said something to Bobby about it, and he replied, "No, that's a goose." So I'm trying to distinguish exactly what I'm hearing when Freckles races down the ramp, barking full force. Then we distinctly hear the cry of a chicken. So I get up, head to the bathroom window as quickly as I can, and see a fox standing on TOP of the privacy fence, over the chicken pen. I went outside in my pajamas and the fox went off the other side of the fence. I quickly let the one hen in the pen out, and started looking for the second one. I couldn't find her. And then I saw the feathers...two huge piles all around the little hen house. I felt sick, but there was nothing I could do. So about an hour later, I heard the cries of a chicken, and run back outside thinking we're losing our last hen. Instead, the rooster is trying to mate a nearly bald hen. She was alive!!! Evidently Freckles interrupted the fox's attack. So since that night, both hens have been roosting in the garage (we have an open garage), refusing to go into the hen house, and the last few nights the rooster has joined them there. And when he crows in the morning, it reverberates.  Last night, something made him crow not long after they made their perch. I went outside to see what was going on, and the dumb thing was responding to its own echo. (Ever since they cleared the woods for the elementary school, there's been a very distinct echo on our curve of the road.) We do have some friends who will be helping us make a roof for the pen before we gut the house and rebuild. I will be glad when that day gets here!