Persistent Predators

I obtained permission from our parish priest to haul away some aluminum awning frames that were no longer in use and were cluttering up the church yard. My plan is to make a portable chicken run. So far I have bolted the two together to make one long run and have contemplated my options.

These are the 2 awning frames, bolted together.

The day after I unloaded it from our pick-up I came downstairs after tucking our little ones in to find my husband staring at the fox. It was standing at 8:15, long before the sun had set, right next to the awning frames and staring at the chickens in their hoop house. He was just watching in fascination and disbelief, but I threw down the dirty diaper I was holding and ran out in my house shoes shouting and waving my arms. It looked at me approaching for a good few seconds before turning tail.

Since then I have had an animal trying to get into the hoop house. First the pop door was bent out of place. Then there was fur on the pop door, brownish red fur with longer guard hairs with a touch of black and white and fur on their elevated feeder. I promptly zip tied the pop-door at close intervals so that nothing could squeeze through. Then there were paw prints on the outside walls of the coop and a bent corner of the pop door. Then there was scratching and bare dirt beneath the pop door.

The "hoop house," tall enough to walk into, is on the left.
The top is covered in plastic to keep the rain off.
The door is still plastic-ed too, since we wrap the structure for the winter,
and I never bothered to unwrap the door.
Did you notice the cobwebs in the woven wire fence?
Did you see the tent caterpillar on top of it?

Perhaps it is a 'coon. We have one around the house all the time. I treed it in the crabapple tree just the other day. I think a fox would dig better than this animal has. Perhaps the fox will come back each night until it digs its way in. But the attached coop is so far proving to be impenetrable with its latches, straps, carabiners, and double-walls. I wonder how long they will last because life just isn't letting me get to the moveable chicken run creation.

Here's a pic. of the treed raccoon.