Heinous Guineas Part 2

Just some pictures to enjoy.

Their eyes are a nice pretty blue. Can't really say much about the rest of them. You can certainly picture them pecking a hole in a chicken's head. I hope these guineas behave themselves.

Nighttime rituals

While most creatures slow down, get quiet, and settle in for the night, the guineas have quite another nighttime ritual. They eventually do settle down, but before that there is quite a bit of activity and a cacophony of sound. Our neighbor Joe called last night to see if the guineas were all right because he could hear them from his house. They have recently started sleeping in the mesquite trees at night.

Doghouse? I thought this was my private chicken coop!

Every morning this chicken jumps over the fence to get into the backyard and lay her egg in the doghouse. Here is part of the sequence. By this time, she has already walked across the lawn and is circling the doghouse.

After she's done, she goes back across the lawn and jumps back over the fence.



Then we have to get the egg out of the doghouse, which is the hard part for us. The lid, which is a 4 x 8 piece of plywood, lifts up so we can get into the doghouse without crawling in.

I wore this shirt for my beloved sister, Vivian. She hates my shirts with the holes in the sleeves.

Rain

Last night we had a huge rainstorm. It was accompanied by tremendous amounts of lightning and thunder. The storm must have been directly overhead. Findlay was sleeping inside our room as usual, but even being in the same room with us was not enough to keep him calm with all the noise. He kept walking around to Paul's side of the bed. I guess he had to get the real "alpha dog's" reassurance and not just mine. Eventually, I moved his dog bed right beside me so I could keep my hand on him, and every time there was a clap of thunder he would jerk his whole body. I had never seen him so scared before.

When we checked the rain gauge in the morning, we had gotten 2.9 inches of rain. You could see in the backyard that there had been rivers of water flowing from one side of the property to the other.


Our burn pit (which is about 2-1/2 feet deep) was completely full of water.


It looked like there were oil slicks on the water.


When we looked more closely, the oil slicks turned out to be thousands of little bugs floating on top of the water. We have no idea what they were.

Heinous Guineas

Yesterday, my sister wanted to know how the "heinous guineas" were doing. This picture should confirm that they are indeed heinous. The guineas are starting to practice their calls and other vocalizations. I'm not sure what they're so excited about in this clip, but they do this every evening. The distinct two-syllable call is from a female guinea. The males can't make that sound.