When I grow up, I want to be a paleoartist. The “when” in that equation being rather nebulous. My mom and my husband have both been waiting years for any hint of maturity. But, if I were a betting person, I’d won’t lay much money on “soon.”
In the meantime, I get to exercise my artistic talents on guinea hens. Yeah. Guinea hens. During this weekend’s art show, I got a request for a guinea hen crossing sign. The requester wants the sign as a gift for a friend.
Guinea hens are a small miracle. As in, it’s a miracle they haven’t gone extinct.
My exposure to guineas has been limited mostly to road encounters. It’s not unusual to round a corner on our little country road and find your car fender deep in a flock of guineas.
In our little slice of rural semi-suburbia, there’s usually some misguided soul who’s decided that having a flock of mentally retarded birds is just the ticket for dealing with insect pests. A friend of mine acquire a flock hoping they’d eat all the insects plaguing her garden.
They did just that. And then they ate her garden and promptly took to roaming around the neighborhood, annoying the neighbors, becoming coyote Happy Meals, and occasionally, road kill.
When I was a kid, we had horses. Since we lived in the city, we boarded our horses in a pasture on the outskirts of town. At some point, the owners of the land must have had the usual delusions of pest control and purchased a few guinea hens. I don’t think the flock lasted more than a few months, quickly becoming the meat du jour for local predators. But in the meantime, one particular hen loved to sit in the fence.
My horse loved to sneak up on this hen and, with a casual flip of his nose, send the stupid bird flying in the air. Either this bird loved being turned into a projectile, or, more likely, was dumber than a bag of hammers, but it returned for more abuse, day after day.
I wonder if guinea hens make good eatin’?
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