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a farm
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Joyce B
Talk about frustration and
futility.
Not that it was the old guinea’s
fault, at all. She’s been guilty of
nothing, more than simple
response to inbred stimuli, a natur
al inclination to do what millions
of her species before have done.
And so. for the past few years,
the aging Pearl guinea would seek
out some hidden depression in the
perennial border, demarkation line
between the edge of the lawn and
the beginning of the fields beyond.
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There, .under the protective
canopy offered by clumps of
gracefully arching dayljlies and
swaying stems of fall asters (plus a
few giant, volunteer stalks of rag
weed), the old mother guinea
would fill her nest with hope.
Along about mid-summer’s
battle with the ragweed, I would
generally find the nest, cradling a
clutch of a few dozen cream
colored, brown speckled eggs.
Sterile eggs they were, devoid of
any sign of impending life, none
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ever to be tediously opened by a
chick pecking its way to the light
of day
- Our last male guinea disap
peared about four years ago.
For another year or so, there
had been two females, sharing the
filling of a nest of futility. Eventu
ally. one of them flew to the great
poultry pen in the sky, leaving this
solitary, lonely bird. She took up
keeping company with the few
remaining backyard chickens,
who tolerated, but never really
accepted, her overtures of
friendship.
Of course, that may have been
due to her habit of trying to steal
their chicks. Anytime a hen
hatched out a few chicks, the
guinea would be right there on the
outskirts, trying to chase off the
natural mother. She took her sur
rogate role quite seriously, ready
to chase off any cat, dog or human
intruder getting too close to the
infants.
For two summers, our eldest
took pity on the frustrated guinea
hen, pleading that we acquire the
Reg. $2.59
now $2.39
Lancaster mining. Saturday, August is, 1989-B5
bird some chicks of her own to at all.
adopt Time, memory and good
intentions never guite got
together, until two weeks ago.
Then I moved the computer key
board, and a ragged-edged, classi
fied ad run by a nearby hatchery
appeared on the office desk.
Just in time, too. The last hatch
of the season had just taken place,
so my order for a half-dozen of the
tiny chicks went in right under the
wire.
All six of them could have fit
into the palm of my hand. Four
looked like baby pheasants, in
shades of browns and blacks. The
other two, however, were an off
shade of white. Lavendars, they
called them, a type of guinea that
when mature is the color
0f.....we11, lavendar.
“Purple peeps!” laughed the
youngest. “You got purple
peeps?”
How to bring together the old
would-be mother and these sik
machine-hatched chicks proved to
be a formidable problem. They
were certainly much too tiny to be
released outside, where a veritable
army of bird*loving cats roams the
premises. The old guinea, used to
living virtually wild, coming and
going as she pleased, was not
going to take lightly to relocation
inside any sort of enclosure. And,
suppose she wouldn’t adopt them
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When in doubt, stall.
Into a big cardboard box on the
greenhouse bench went the fluffy
balls of brown and “lavendar.” A
shop trouble light, graciously
loaned by the Fanner,'provided
additional warmth.
Two weeks later, the largest of
the chicks were testing their wings
and roosting on the box edges.
After retrieving one found perch
ing on the edge of a water bucket,
it seemed time to make other
arrangements. A screened topper
for a pickup, no longer in use by a
friend, offered a temporary “bond
ing” pen for chicks and would-be
mother hen.
A typical fairy-tale ending has
the guinea spreading her wings
and die chicks diving beneath in a
beautiful, touching, union of spir
its. In reality, the guinea is still
grumbling because we’ve penned
her, and the chicks hover together
in a comer, looking bewildered.
So much for fairytale endings.