We have only one guinea hen left from the batch of keets I bought 5 years ago. Blanche, a pretty lavender, spends her days free-ranging the yard, tolerating the other chickens, ducks, & geese, and calling to the invisible guinea whose call echoes off the house next door.
She has a wire cage where she is kept for safety at night. Many nights she will hop into it all by herself, or at least roost nearby at nightfall. Recently we've had a bobcat prowling our yard and it's all the more imperative that she is safely behind hardware cloth after dark.
But perversely, right at this time Blanche has decided to go to roost in different places each night, forcing us to go searching by flashlight for her. (We blame this on the radio signals she must be receiving from the Mother Ship through the knobby antenna on top of her head.)
Last night she was particularly difficult to find. At nightfall she wasn't anywhere near her cage, nor in any of her usual perches, and nowhere to be seen up in any trees or fence rails. I feared that she might have already been taken by the bobcat, who often hunts at sundown. We had to leave to take my teen son to his church group, but when we returned several hours later, another son & I went out again with flashlights to look some more.
We scoured the entire yard, looking up every single tree, and on top of every structure and piece of furniture or play equipment. Absolutely everywhere around the whole huge yard. We did not see Blanche anywhere.
We did see, to our delight, 2 lovely little screech owls!
I was re-crossing the back yard at the very end of my circuit, despairing of ever seeing Blanche again, when, while walking under the mango tree, I heard a very faint little whistling noise that sounded very guinea-ish. I stopped, waiting to hear it again. My son came up behind me, and I shushed him, saying "I think that I heard a guinea sound, listen!" and walked forward, scanning the area for Blanche. My son shone his flashlight up into the mango tree (where we had already looked several times) and said "Hey Mom! I see Blanche!"
And there she was, 'way up in that mango tree, in a spot that wasn't very easy to see from the ground. If she hadn't whistled then, I may have never looked there.
Blanche made all her sputtering stuttering angry noises when I climbed up the ladder to reach her and bring her down. But I'd rather have an angry guinea than a dead one!
Thank You, Jesus, for answering our prayers and helping us find our dear Blanche. His eye is also on the guinea!
She has a wire cage where she is kept for safety at night. Many nights she will hop into it all by herself, or at least roost nearby at nightfall. Recently we've had a bobcat prowling our yard and it's all the more imperative that she is safely behind hardware cloth after dark.
But perversely, right at this time Blanche has decided to go to roost in different places each night, forcing us to go searching by flashlight for her. (We blame this on the radio signals she must be receiving from the Mother Ship through the knobby antenna on top of her head.)
Last night she was particularly difficult to find. At nightfall she wasn't anywhere near her cage, nor in any of her usual perches, and nowhere to be seen up in any trees or fence rails. I feared that she might have already been taken by the bobcat, who often hunts at sundown. We had to leave to take my teen son to his church group, but when we returned several hours later, another son & I went out again with flashlights to look some more.
We scoured the entire yard, looking up every single tree, and on top of every structure and piece of furniture or play equipment. Absolutely everywhere around the whole huge yard. We did not see Blanche anywhere.
We did see, to our delight, 2 lovely little screech owls!
I was re-crossing the back yard at the very end of my circuit, despairing of ever seeing Blanche again, when, while walking under the mango tree, I heard a very faint little whistling noise that sounded very guinea-ish. I stopped, waiting to hear it again. My son came up behind me, and I shushed him, saying "I think that I heard a guinea sound, listen!" and walked forward, scanning the area for Blanche. My son shone his flashlight up into the mango tree (where we had already looked several times) and said "Hey Mom! I see Blanche!"
Blanche made all her sputtering stuttering angry noises when I climbed up the ladder to reach her and bring her down. But I'd rather have an angry guinea than a dead one!
