The ticks are bad this year. I’ve already picked two off the dogs and one off of me. I hear everybody’s got them. It makes me miss having Guineas. They great tick eaters. It must be instinct, because Guineas have a hard time keeping their minds on anything for very long.
They don’t seem to remember anything. Ever. You could go out and chase them around with a stick, hide behind the goat barn, and come out three minutes later with a can of corn- all would be forgiven. “Forget and Forgive.” That’s a guinea’s motto.
Years ago, I raised guineas from hatchlings. When I first released the teenage guineas from the safety of their pen to roost in the wide, cruel world, I lost two of them because they wouldn’t fly up into a tree. Sleeping on the ground doesn’t sound like a big deal, but to the varmints in my neighborhood it was a midnight, blue-plate special. If I were a little bird, and I’d seen my brother/sister get munched the night before, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be flopping my wings off to try and get up to one of those branches. But the guineas forgot.
So, to prevent further casualties, I had to devise a learning program for the birds. It went something like this. “Walk around at dusk. If the guineas are roosting in a stupid place, scare them off and make them find a better one.” The program was mostly successful, and the birds were starting to roost up in the gnarled branches of a big oak tree that separated the yard from the wildness of the woods.
One fine evening, around dusk, I meandered down, feeding the dogs and penning up the chickens. All the time, I watched the guineas out of the corner of my eye. Finally, Big Daddy (the guinea patriarch) flew up to the top of the chicken coop. He called down to the teenagers. They began fly up, joining him one by one.
I pulled back into the woods, out of sight. If the guineas were distracted from their roosting, they’d forget why they were in the tree in the first place and fly down. So I stayed hidden as they settled in on top of the chicken pen. Not the smartest place to sleep, considering a raccoon could scale it like a ladder and help himself to an “all-you-can-eat-buffet.”
So I had to run them off. I grabbed up a big, scary stick and made monster noises, running at them and hitting the top of the chicken wire like a caveman. The guineas flew for their lives, away from the chicken pen and out into the grass. I hid immediately in the goat barn. As I predicted, they forgot me in about two minutes. When I came out shaking a can of corn, they were actually glad to see me. They fell in line behind me and we all walked slowly up the hill toward the roosting oak. I sprinkled corn right beneath their sleeping spot and continued toward the house.
When I got as far as the wellhouse, I ducked behind it and watched them. They pecked at the ground, “chuck-chucking” until all the corn was gone. Then Big Daddy noticed it was getting dark. He looked around for a roost, finding one “conveniently located” just overhead. Then beating gray-spotted wings, he lifted himself up into the lowest branch of the oak. You’d think that it would have been safe for me to go inside at this point, believing that the rest of the young guineas would be smart enough to fly up as well. But it didn’t work that way. All four of them had to remember that they could fly, and that was going to take a while.
I consoled myself with a strawberry, plucked from unruly flowerbed that grew beside the wellhouse. I bit into the fruit. It was warm on the outside, still warm from the day. The crunch of the tiny seeds turned into sweetness. I polished it off slowly, dropping the stem on the ground at my feet. I sat then, my back against the well house. It was cool there, cool like clay. I peered around the wall, through the curtain of late-blooming honeysuckles.
The white guinea made the first branch. Big Daddy shrilled proudly. But the other three guineas, Larry, Moe, and Curly were still not very interested in roosting. I had to wait some more. A movement caught my eye. A big garden spider was dropping down a dry leaf fastened to the end of a strand of silk. Tacking onto the center of the strand, the black and yellow spider darted back and forth. The bugs would be out soon and the web would be ready.
By now, Mo and Larry had flown to safety. Curly was the only one left on the ground and he ran back and forth, cheeping piteously. Behind the wellhouse, the mosquitoes had discovered me, making me wish for long sleeves. Looking over my shoulder at the darkening house, I saw the yellow light spilling out of the window, calling me inside. Finally Curly fluttered himself up into the tree.
My vigil was finished. All five guineas were safe. I turned to make my way up the shadowy path towards the house, leaving the spider to her nightly work. Reaching down, I took a final strawberry.