Not A Peaceful Neighborhood Today

I had the day off work. I wanted to spend a day at home enjoying some peace and quiet. Turns out I didn't get that. My neighborhood was not peaceful today. When I walked out the front door to get the newspaper, a dead body lay on my step. A dead mouse body that is. What is the story here? Some neighborhood cat leaving me an offering? Who or what killed this mouse and left it here? I wish my shovel had a longer handle. I don't like mice, dead or alive. I want to get rid of this mouse. You've heard about the salmonella infected eggs at the grocery store? Yesterday I heard the chickens got salmonella from eating a rat that was in the chicken feed. I don't want the chickens to find this mouse or they might get salmonella too. Later I was busy in the kitchen when the chickens, who were roaming free in the yard, started up a chicken ruckus. Sounded like a chicken riot out there. Sometimes they get all alarmed and when I go out there I find nothing going on. I went out on my deck. On the lowest branch of a white oak tree - just fifteen feet from the deck - a hawk flew off to the north. I didn't get a good look at the hawk but it was a big one. I don't think it's my usual red-shouldered hawk because this hawk was silent. So this time they had a good reason to raise a ruckus. I went back to my work and ten minutes later the chickens start raising a ruckus again. I can't see them from the deck so I run out the front yard. I have two black spruce trees on the east side of the house. The chickens were all gathered by the spruce tree. I counted all four of them. Then I saw the hawk fly off one of the lower branches of the closest spruce tree. I was a witness to an attempted chicken murder.