Like many families we have a few pets....to be exact we have 1 dog named Jake and 6 chickens.  We used to have 7 chickens...then a possum made its way into our coop (our fault for not closing it up at night) and it took one of our chicks (we had 4 chicks and 3 hens) and killed it.  Possums actually have very sharp teeth and can do a lot of damage. My wonderful husband made the discovery when he went out the next morning and we were missing a chick, but there was a trail of feathers and blood going out the coop and up the fence.  My husband decided the possum needed to die and set some traps for it.  Then, last night, around 11 PM, Jake started to go nuts, barking at the coop.  Out the door ran my husband, garden tiller in hand.  He chased the possum, who got caught in one of the traps, and then was able to finish off the possum after a brief struggle in the backyard. Below is a post-death video explaining the situation (I wish I would have caught the catching of the possum on video).  For the record, had the possum never ate one of our chicks, he may have been spared.  But he did AND kept coming back trying to get another, so it had to go...