Have you ever been around guinea fowl? If not, you can trust me that they are in an elite group of creatures that are consistently louder than small children. Now that might be hard to believe if you happen to be near your kids as you begin reading this essay, but if you happen instead to be near a window with a small flock of guineas outside it, you won’t be in the least bit surprised. In fact, you probably won’t be able to pay attention to this next sentence for very long. Now we don’t keep guineas, but there are folks who love them — for their meat and eggs (when they can find them), for their capacious appetite for ticks, and just for their funny way of being in the world. They run everywhere, they scream almost nonstop when they are in the mood, and if they haven’t been well-trained from the beginning, they like to run away from home, or at least from our concept of home.
Some neighbors of ours, about a half-mile across a field, sporadically keep guineas, and one spring they had a particularly feisty group of about four or five hens who ran off and decided to set up shop at our house. It’s hard to describe the sound of their call if you don’t know it, but if I had to try I’d say it sounds something like a Canada goose attacking a car alarm, endlessly. For about two days the guineas stayed around our house, they sent our chickens into utter disarray (chickens and guineas don’t like to have much to do with one another), and we simply couldn’t chase them off. They would leave for a few hours and then sure as a tide come squawking back through the woods on their way, I guess, to the especially succulent ticks and grubs in our yard. By the morning of the third day, my wife was ready to make guinea stew, or hats for everyone, or something along those lines.
Already have an account? Log in
Join KR for even more to read.
