BEWARE of the Weasel

It is only AFTER you get chickens, that you find out you've been living with a weasel! We've lost almost 10 teenage Austerlorp chickens on the farm to a weasel in the last few days. We've never seen it, nor do we really know what we're looking for. Now, when I first thought about a weasel interacting with chickens, I was thinking of a little ferret type animal with innocent little eyes and a pleasant demeanor.
But then I remembered that Looney Tunes cartoon with Foghorn Leghorn and the weasel, and I realized that weasels are maybe a little more aggressive than you might think. But aggressive enough to take 10 chickens in a few days?
It still wasn't adding up in my head, because weasels are so small. I'm fairly certain they are of equal if not a slightly smaller size than our little chickens. The curious detail about our dead chickens was that they were murdered at night AND during the day, and weasels are supposed to be nocturnal. The other curious detail was that the bodies were not being dragged away and devoured, but left out in the open... without their heads. So they must be vicious, snarling little beasts!
Then a gnarly old concrete dude, that was working on our new barn floor, told us that weasels love fresh blood. In fact, they love it so much that they pop the chickens heads off and suck the chickens dry. So... these are not just cute little aggressive beasts, but blood sucking, vampires!
This was a truly disgusting image to have of our cute little austerlorps, between the jaws of that beady eyed blood sucker. While all of this weasel education was coming about, we were trying to figure out how to stop the madness and move on in all of our chicken endeavors. Do we get a dog? Do we mow the grass and wait in a rocking chair with a 22 rifle? Do we put the chickens in the barn and wait until the roosters are big enough to fight the weasel off? Well, we decided to mow the grass, set traps, AND wait with a 22. We shall see how long this evil will remain. Until then, keep your children inside, lock the doors, and get a good nights rest.... if you can...

Adam