Saturday, September 15, 2012

Guineas are funny little birds!

We have one remaining guinea from the 30 or so that I purchased shortly after we moved down here.  They are funny little birds from Africa and excel at eating ticks and bugs.  I figurde that this was exactly what we needed with our acreage here.
Over a period of time, things happened to them. Awful things. They ran away. Some got killed on the road.  One of the neighbors was popping them with a BB gun. And the old livestock guardian dog, a Great Pyrenees, murdered six in an evening, the only thing we could think of was that she was grumpy because of hip pain issues and they went near her feed bowl.  We felt just terrible about all of this.
We were left with one.  Jerry began calling him Hector (we think it's a boy).
Hector has become quite tame in spite of everyone telling us that this doesn't happen.  He sits on the roof, runs up and down it (I have to warn guests that we do NOT have ghosts in the house) and calls out his funny little cackle.  At night he gets in his tree to roost and reads the Guinea Evening News, sadly, there is no one to listen to him, the chickens aren't bright enough to understand, the goats only care about the price of hay and the horses have no interest in what has happened to Hector on the day.  He was quite lonely for a long time but then he discovered the corgis.  And he began to tease them.  One of the neighbors has a pup that comes over and runs up and down, wanting to play with the corgis, and Hector has been watching all of this.  For quite some weeks, he has been making a buzz or two along the edge of the fence, first with the puppies this spring, then with the adults.  Now he does it to all of them and the runs were getting longer and longer.
Today he ran for quite a while and Jerry said "you should be videotaping this" so I did.  I love to make videos and set them to music.  So here is Hector.  You will note that one dog chases him, then another one takes an interest, and then another.  See how many are chasing along the fence by the end!
I hope you enjoy it!
http://youtu.be/xItvEcqHUIQ