I don't have good luck with guineas. I want to own them, because I hear they eat fleas, ticks and other nasties from your yard. But, for some reason, they don't want to eat the fleas, ticks and other nasties in my yard. The first batch I brought home were placed straight into the chicken coop, kept there for two weeks, fed and watered and spoken to daily so that would know where "home" was. The day I decided to let them out to roam and do their flea and tick eating thing, our then-tiny toy fox/jack russell terrier, Jack, chased them into a tree, where they stayed all night making obnoxious noises, and then promptly disappeared. I imagine they flew back home.Yesterday, I traded an Amish hauling job for four guineas. Actually, I paid an extra seven dollars, because the driving job was only worth thirteen. I took the frightened little things home and tried to plop them into the chick ark.
Man, I just realized that you city people probably have no idea what a guinea, or Amish hauling, or a chick ark even is. Huh.
Anyway, so I open up the crate containing the young guineas. Immediately and without hesitation, there's a mass of flapping wings and panicking birds, and a flash of white overtakes me as the guineas fly up OVER the crate, out of the opening of the ark and over my head. Then, just to be helpful, my big dumb black lab comes to my rescue and chases them in three very different directions. Onto the roof one way, up into a tree another way, and a third way out into the tall prairie grasses. ARGH!
Oh! But wait! One of the guineas is still hunkered in the back of the crate, afraid of the big black dog and the big scary woman! I grab it, unceremoniously throw it into the ark with the chicks and slam the door.
There's no way to catch the fugitive guineas. I chase after the one on the ground for a few minutes in my bare feet, hopping across patches of clover and thistle whle watching for bees and snakes, until the guinea is clear out of sight.
So I stomp in the house and there's my sweet little two-year-old girl, The Baby, looking up at me with questions in her eyes.
"What's your problem, Mama?" she asks me. Her darling face lifts my spirits, and I make a pretend angry scowl.
"I'm really mad!" I growl. She lifts her hands and I pick her up.
"Don't be really mad, Mama!" She says in a sing-song voice.
"Don't be mad?" I ask in mock confusion. "What should I be?"
"Be...be HAPPY!" she says.
It's such wonderful, simple advice that I decide to follow it.
And the guineas came back this morning. Early. Making obnoxious noises and eluding the dogs.
I'm happy.
