Having raised guineas for years, it never ceases to amaze me what a bundle of contradictions they are. They can do some pretty smart things, but most of the time they act like they haven’t got a brain in that little bitty head of theirs.

For instance, every night they fly way up in one of the walnut trees to roost, coming to rest on branches 30-40’ off the ground. Yet, during the day they’ll run along side a 4’ fence, up and down, up and down, and can’t figure out how to get to the other side.

However, while they can’t figure out to fly over a little fence, they’re smart enough to use a concept of team mothering. Most of the time around here, a couple of guineas will have side-by-side nests. When the keets hatch, they both take care of them. In fact, quite often their whole sub-group looks after the babies, with three to seven adults looking after one bunch of keets.

Now they can be very good mothers, but they can also be very mean mothers. On one hand if a hawk passes overhead the keets will hide is the grass while the adult guineas go running off in different directions, trying to draw the hawk’s attention away from the babies.

On the other hand, the adults go zipping along all day, and if those little keet legs can’t keep up, too bad. They just get left behind. Seems kind of mean, cause on the average, only half the keets survive and thrive. Yeah, I know, survival of the fittest and all that, but it still seems mean.

Saturday we were surprised to see that although it’s getting colder, a couple of the guineas had 7 or 8 new keets of the little-bitty-no-bigger-than-a-golf-ball variety following them around. Obviously newly hatched, they could barely keep up with Mama Guinea.

And following the usual pattern, the next morning they were down to 4 keets. Somewhere along the line, the rest just didn’t keep up. Mean mothers.

Then yesterday evening when I went out to do evening chores, I went walking towards the shed only to hear a lot of peep-peep-peeping at my feet. Looking down, I finally located the little keets hiding in the grass. Since I happened to have my camera with me, I thought, “Oh cool! I’ll just get some close-up pictures of these little guys.” Ha! I just thought I was going to get some pictures.

I squatted down close to them and brought my camera up to focus in when all of a sudden….

Something slammed into the top of my bent-over head and knocked me on my butt, leaving a few trails of fire on my forehead and in my hair.

I sat there for a while shaking my head, and finally tumbled to the fact there was Mama Guinea scurrying off with all her little keets. To her way of thinking, I had gotten too close to her babies. She thought she needed to defend her keets from me, and the best way to do that was to slam into me as hard as she could while raking me with those wicked claws of hers.

Dang! Did I mention guineas can be mean mothers? My head still hurts! Guineas may not be very big, but when one slams into the top of your bent-over head, it gets your attention!

You can bet when I went out this morning to do chores I made sure I didn’t get between Mama Guinea and her babies, and all picture taking was done from a distance.

Since I didn’t have sense enough to stay away from those babies last night, I didn’t want Mama Guinea knocking out what little sense might be left in my head this morning!

Cause you know, guineas can be mean mothers.

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Yesterday morning when I went out to do chores, I noticed Miss “My Pad is a Purple Bucket” was still in the chicken pen.  Well, there’s reason for the saying “up with the chickens.”  They’re usually out foraging at the crack of dawn, and there she was, still in the pen.

Her little chick was huddled down underneath her.

When I got up close, the little chick went running around, but the mother hen never moved. She was dead.

The little peep looked so pitiful trying to keep close to the mother. It would go out every once in a while and eat some cracked corn I threw on the ground, but would go running back to scoot under the mother hen’s body every time another chicken came close.

I’m guessing the hen just died of old age.  We’ve been losing one of the girls from our foundation flock every now and then.  As you can see from her white feathers, she was getting old.  In her prime, her feathers were all that golden color.

The Farmer disposed of the mama hen last night, and I have the chick in a cage on the back porch.  I feel sorry for the little mite.  It keeps peeping for a mama that isn’t going to come back.

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The young chickens seem to congregrate together, while the older ones go off and do their own thing.

Here’s a bunch of our younger crew I caught in a heap on top of a lumber pile. They’re a mix of Buff Orpington, Polish Silver Laced, and Sicilian Buttercup.  It always amazes me we ended up with so many white chickens in this generation, when none of the foundation flock was white.

A real motley crew!

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It’s late in the year to be having chicks, but I guess we forgot to tell the hens that.  Miss “My Pad Is A Purple Bucket” just hatched out 4 little chicks. 

She would have had more, but several eggs somehow rolled out of the bucket and got too cold.  I picked them up thinking other chickens had been in there laying eggs, and cracked them open to feed the dogs.  There were half-formed chicks in them… ewwwwww….

A chick, chick here…

It wasn’t long until she was walking over the pastures foraging while her little peeps stumbled through the tall grass in her wake.

Of course, Miss Peepers still has her 3 little chicks, and they too are running around in the fields.  They also come out in the morning with the other chickens to peck at the corn I throw out.

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Yesterday morning when I first came to consciousness, the first thing that made an impression was all the barking. Lots of barking. LOUD barking. Continual barking. So my first waking thought was, “What in the world is that crazy dog barking at?”

There was no thunder. He’s a great fan of barking at thunder. It’s his number one reason for barking. He jumps way up and seems to think if he can just jump high enough and bark loud enough, some day he’s going to catch that thunder.

Have I mentioned we have a tendency more for the weird than the wonderful around here?

Anyway, once I got myself moving, I went outside to see what was prompting all the barking. There were no cats. No squirrels. No stray dogs. No stray people. There was nothing I could see out of the ordinary except… trash.

Yes, the neighbors who hardly ever show up – you remember them, they’re the ones with this sign on their door -

- these neighbors had been home and put some trash by the side of the road for pick-up yesterday morning.  Now hopefully they’re more skilled at remodeling than they are at spelling.  They must have been working on a bathroom as there were several empty boxes from a fan, a bathroom vanity, and other stuff setting by their mailbox, along with a big trash can.

It was something new, something different, something strange.  And whatever it was, Toby didn’t think it should be there.

However, he’s prone to trash talk-barking from afar, and not so keen on getting up close and in-your-face personal.  When The Farmer took our trash out to the road, Toby and I went along. 

He wasn’t too thrilled at the idea of getting up close to that strange stuff.  Nope, he didn’t want anything to do with it, but I finally coaxed him up close enough to see it wasn’t moving.  He decided to give it a sniff.

He was very cautious checking out these unexpected things by the road.  After sniffing over all the boxes, he gave the garbage can a once over too.

He decided perhaps these items weren’t going to attack anyone after all.

Our other “dog”, Spot, remained unconvinced, arching his back and bushing his tail at the menacing pile of trash.  He didn’t care for its sudden appearance either.

When all was said and done, Toby gave up his trash talk-barking and expressed his opinion in a different manner. He walked right up to the bushes beside the trash, and…

Please to excuse the blurry photo. By this time I was laughing so hard I couldn’t hold the camera still.  I’m thinking the neighbors should be thankful there wasn’t a puddle by and on their trash can.  They’ll never know how much commotion their suddenly appearing pile of trash caused.

But if they put some more out by the road next week, I hope Toby remembers it’s safe and doesn’t wake me up with more of that trash talk-barking!

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No, this bucket of chicken isn’t Colonel Sanders KFC.

It’s not any kind of processed chicken at all!  This one is still completely in the natural state…

Now, her choice of a nesting site isn’t exactly all natural. I mean, she’s a pretty trendy chick here to be choosing a bright purple bucket for her pad!

Just gives a “bucket of chicken” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

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I went out one morning to do chores and heard a whole lot of peeping going on.  LOUD peeping.  I tracked it down to the chicken pen.  More precisely, to the wire between the chicken pen and front, and the peafowl pen in back.

A little peachick managed to get inbetween layers of chicken wire and crawl upwards - I presume in a misguided effort to get back out.

Lady, quit taking pictures and HELP ME!!!

Once I rescued the little guy (gal?) from its’ predicament and put it back in the pen with Mama Peahen, I was NOT welcome.  She was disturbed and pacing back and forth, and WILL YOU PLEASE LEAVE!?!

Hey, I can take a hint! I got my camera and myself out of there and left them in peace.

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