Growing up in the country, we didn’t actually have that many animals. Mostly, cats and dogs that came and went, with our Shihtzu Katie being the only staple from start to finish. But then, one summer, Mom decided that she wanted guinea fowl. I think she had read somewhere that they were good for pests, and thought that was exactly what her garden needed.
This might be a good time to mention that my mother had zero experience with farm animals of any kind (see my previous column on her first cattle drive). Yet, she had a can-do spirit. So off she went to a nearby relative’s house and came back with a box of 10 guinea chicks.
I think we spent a few hours on the back porch gushing over how cute they were and taking an ungodly amount of photos in a time before digital cameras.
And then we left them. Overnight. Outside. In a cast-iron tub.
You can imagine what we found the next morning. About half of the chicks had died. There were tears. Fretting. Mom frantically called our relative to ask what she did wrong. She then packed up the remaining guinea chicks into the box she brought them home in and left.
When she returned, she had a heat lamp and other necessary supplies for keeping baby fowl alive. She also had 10 new guinea chicks and five baby chickens.
These chicks, we managed to keep alive until they were big enough to move into the shed-converted-into-a-coop. We gave up on naming the guineas since we couldn’t tell them apart, but our chickens became Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Ariel.
Mom had grand dreams of fresh eggs and a bugfree garden.
At first, all was well.And then Mom began to notice that the guineas weren’t exactly eating the bugs -- they were eating her garden. Also, it took about two hours to get them rounded up and back in the coop at night.
We also discovered that Snow White was actually Prince Charming. And he was not very charming. The only person he wouldn’t chase and try to peck to death was my younger sister. He liked her and would ride around on her shoulder. Instead of pecks, she got a case of scabies, but never seemed to hold it against him.
In short, the guineas were impossible. They found every way they could to escape the yard, and we would have to embark on journeys to find them. Once they got across the road, deep into the weeds and woods. After about five minutes of becoming covered in stickers, Mom threw her hands in the air and yelled, “Fine! Stay there!” and we went back to the house.
I can’t remember how many went in, but we had two or three return.
One night, a few managed to fly up to the roof of my Dad’s workshop. After about an hour of trying to get them down, Mom shouted, “Fine! Stay up there!” We went in for the night, expecting them to be carried off by owls. Much to our shock, most of them were still there, alive and well, the next morning.
Over the summer, our flock of guinea fowl gradually decreased. At one point, I’m pretty sure we gave up on going out of our way to keep them alive. Yes, we tried to get them back into the coop and fed them and all. But we didn’t bother with searching when they ran off.
We were down to just a few when tragedy struck yet again. My great-uncle’s bird dogs got into the coop and carried off most of the fowl left, including Prince Charming. I’ve never seen my sister so mad.
For the sake of the whole family, Mom decided raising any sort of fowl was too much work. She packed up the remaining stragglers, which was a hilarious sight in and of itself, and whisked them back from whence they came, where hopefully they would survive longer than they did with us.