Name Your Blog Eightq: Introducing the Supreme Being...

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Introducing the Supreme Being...

A gathering of guineas

Down at the Guinea Fowl Inn the Goddess Interfera (that’s me) has, I believe, been elevated to the status of Supreme Being. After a long and traumatic summer, it seems I have finally earned my worth.

Wait, let me step back a moment.

My lovely blogging pal, Angela, sent me an email the other day saying that I appeared to have gone AWOL again and didn’t I have any guinea fowl stories to share. Of course there are guinea fowl stories to share – aren’t there always – but the trouble is, for the most part, they’ve been desperately sad. Of the first hatch three survived to the point of being about to get their combs and then disappeared. I’m hoping they are still out there somewhere. Of the second hatch, five have survived, are nearly full size and return to the garden every night to roost in the flowering gums. I reckon they have only been this successful because that doughty old girl, The Duchess, took over and reared them. The Duchess, to be honest, deserves a blogpost of her own, but for now a picture of Her Mightiness will have to suffice.

The Duchess, an old bird, who no longer has her comb. A stout kidnapper and defender of her own clan, an old terror to weaklings and outsiders. And fiercesome "watchdog"...

The third hatch vanished in the middle of the night. Poof! I woke up to hear the adults screeching (something they continued to do for all the next day) but of the keets there was no sign. No bodies, no feathers, nothing. It was like a wormhole had opened in the fabric of the time-space continuum and they’d slipped through. What I suspect more likely though, was that the neighbour’s cat got them. Then we had the fourth hatch – a single hen – who thank goodness was later joined by three other adults – and 17 just-hatched keets (only a few hours old). For two weeks they flourished. Then two died. Then four fell in the pool while I was out and drowned. The other 11 continued nicely for another five days and then, over three days, with the alarm call of the resident guineas going off every night, every one of them disappeared – again, no bodies. We found the last one in the garden, very worse for wear and it died in a few hours later. We figured we had two problems. A pathogen and a predator. And we hoped no more chicks would turn up in the garden as it’s obviously not a good place for them to be.

Ha.

For the past year we’ve had a resident pair of guineas who hung out in the garden by day and roosted in the gums by night - and who were rudely evicted from the garden by the arrival of the Duchess’s clan. So, the poor things laid their eggs on the verge, in the depths of the agapanthus and right outside our gate. Once the eggs hatched, they found their way into the neighbour’s garden, managed to get three keets into our garden (I have no idea how since there is a six foot wall to get over) and then looked at us expectantly. I called the neighbour (I could hear the other keets screaming on the other side of the wall), went round with a box, gathered them all up and brought them home. Well, you know, what else was I supposed to do...

But this was when a new dilemma arose. The garden has been over-foraged, and pretty much denuded of all worm and bug life – and in case you didn’t know although they are omnivorous, guinea fowl eat far more living beasties than they eat seed or grain.

And so it was off to the reptile pet shop on the far side of town to buy mealworms. And it was at this point that my status in the universe changed.

The Charge of the Guinea Brigade

The Goddess Interfera, who is now also The Bearer of Worms, has reached such an elevated status that she gets followed around by eight little guinea keets murmuring “Mee, Mee, Mee, Mee”. They mob me and they flock around my feet in a way which is quite unnatural for a wild creature. If they think there are worms, they will back off for nothing. Not even the black sparrowhawk, sitting high up in the flowering gum will deter them – mostly, I suspect, because they know the Supreme Being will oversee their mealtimes and woe betide anyone who bothers them.

But I think pictures will tell this story far better than words…