Fowl murder

Out on one of our miraculous "sunbreaks", we ran into the husband of the couple across the street. He said in the middle of the night we had wild weather, he was awakened by chickens shrieking. He dashed out into hail and rain and wind to see what was going on, and found that raccoons had unlatched the main door to the coop and dragged off one of the birds. He saw them scuffling around in the bushes, drove them off, and retrieved the dead bird. Latching the door more securely, he went back to bed, only to be wakened not long after by more alarems from the birds. This time he found the raccoons had pulled down a latch on a window, and another chicken was missing. He put the last remaining bird in the garage, and went back to bed, soaked and cold. Next morning, there was the missing chicken, pecking away serenely in the grass. He has no idea how she evaded the raccoons.
That night I went out to run an errand, and as I went down onto the sidewalk, there was a raccoon which looked like about a thirty pounder, staring at me. I waved at it, and shooed it, but it quite boldly lay down across the sidewalk before me. I went the other way. Later there were a couple of them up on our porch roof, staring in a window; scary critters.