A near eastside family already lost one chicken in a dog attack and is afraid the pit bulls could return. Erika Burcher caught the attack on camera but was afraid to fight off the dogs herself in her backyard in the Spades Park neighborhood.

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) – A near eastside family already lost one chicken in a dog attack and is afraid the pit bulls could return.

Erika Burcher caught the attack on camera but was afraid to fight off the dogs herself in her backyard in the Spades Park neighborhood.

Burcher came home from work Friday afternoon to see her chicken coop being attacked by two dogs.

She rushed to try to chase the dogs off. But for one of her two hens, it was already too late.



"We managed to get the coop back together,” said Burcher Monday morning, showing the repairs she and her husband made. “But you can see all the paw marks and the dirt from scrambling. You can see their teeth marks on here. They bent these wires here. They ripped off the sunshade. One of the screws came loose, because they took this piece out and the back of the coop opened, and they jumped in.”



A brown hen named Bear is now all alone in the small fenced coop. Bear’s companion Little was killed by the two pit bulls. Erika caught the attack on her phone camera as a neighbor tried to help.



"Go! Get out of here! Get! Get!"

Phone video shows a neighbor yelling and trying to get the dogs away from the coop with a PVC pipe.



"It was a traumatizing experience because I mean it's our pet,” said Burcher. “All pets are family members. We basically watched it get murdered. I couldn't do anything to stop it because I was afraid."



Burcher raised Bear and Little from chicks out of the egg. Both were six months old and recently started producing their own eggs.

"Kind of a dream of being an urban farmer in Indianapolis. That allows us to do that. We raise them because we love them. We love their companionship. They're smarter than we think, and we wanted some farm fresh eggs."



Little's gray feathers are spread all over the side yard from the attack. Burcher said she had never seen the dogs before, but the brown dog with white markings on its face came back on Sunday. Burcher saw that pit bull in the neighborhood again Monday.