Mystery in the Hen House

Last night I walked out to the hen house aka milking barn (that sound you just heard is Grandpa turning in his grave, RIP) to collect the eggs. This is a nightly chore, very routine.

At the same time, I brought out the newly-cartoned-eggs from last night to put in the fridge for sale. I'm efficient like that.

Point is, I could see--even before I added the newest 2 dozen eggs to the fridge--that we had another 4 dozen there waiting for our customers. In other words, we had plenty of eggs in the fridge.

With my trusty egg basket in hand, I first closed the sliding barn door to keep out any and all chicken-eating-critters and then proceeded to the nests to collect the eggs. To where I found nothing.

NOTHING!

Not an empty shell or two, not a few eggs hidden under the bedding, not one single egg.

What the....???

We've had egg problems in the past and usually the culprit is her:

Or her:

Or her:

Egg-eating chickens are extremely problematic because we're not able to hang in the barn all day keeping a watchful eye on the flock to see which one is the guilty party. It usually takes more than a week to find out which one is eating the eggs, severely cutting in to our egg supply, and it also usually doesn't end well for the poor hen.

*insert moment of silence here*

But usually an egg-eating-chicken will get full, she'll leave a few eggs behind, and the remaining eggs tell the story, as they're completely mucked up and covered in egg yolk/nest litter/stuck feathers.

Through the years, we've found a few other problematic animals in the hen house. These characters could very well develop taste for farm-fresh eggs, especially after a long, cold winter. And they can be problematic in more ways than one, as you'll quickly agree with me.

The culprits I'm talking about could be him:

Or her:

Other problematic animals exist as well, but are less-likely for obvious reasons.

I'm talking about her,

seeing as we don't have hyenas in Irish Grove.

Or him,

seeing as the time of year seems a bit wrong.

Which leads me to wonder if we might have a problem with another type of animal.

A two-legged.

Someone that looks suspiciously like her:

And yet I'm not convinced. If a two-legged were to steal eggs, wouldn't they just grab some out of the fridge? I can't imagine why they'd enter the barn to collect eggs when there were 4 dozen sitting in the fridge.

So we obviously have a problem. A head-scratcher. A real noggin-cracker. What we have here is a Mystery in the Hen House.