The first few days

Where to even start with this whole adventure...Rick has a friend from work who calls our house "the Ponderosa" At the Ponderosa, we have a huge tick problem-I pulled 45 ticks off Bones in 24 hours. So after visiting family in NY and telling them about our problem, Bill and Michele said something about Guinea Fowl eating ticks. At this point I was willing to try anything-Rick, on the other hand,was a little more hesitant. I ordered 15 guinea fowl from Ideal Poultry in Texas.

The keets (guinea fowl chicks) were supposed to arrive last Tuesday, but of course, life never works out the easy way. I planned to have them show up on Tuesday since I work on Wed and I was driving the boys to camp at VT on Thursday. But all good plans seem to go crazy. I called Ideal Poultry on Tuesday afternoon to see when the keets would arrive and how- was UPS bringing them, perhaps FedEx? Nope, good old USPS and they'd be shipped Priority mail. The only catch was, I had to pick them up at the Post Office. Well since I was going to Blacksburg and knew I wouldn't be in time to pick them up, I was a little stressed out. How was I going to get them? Who in their right mind would be willing to do such a weird request?! So I called Linda...













Of course 15 min after I left the house on Thursday morning, the Post Office calls. Our keets were there. I promptly called Linda (who had said yes to picking them up) and she said she'd get them by lunch. I get a phone call from Linda about 11:30 telling me that the USPS employee didn't want to give her the keets- she needed my exact address. Who in their right mind would be getting live keets in the mail and who would try to go to the post office to steal them?! I guess it happens more often then you would think- people getting live animals in the mail. Linda did tell me the woman in line behind her was thinking she was strange getting live chicks thru the mail......luckily she could say to her that they weren't hers.
Here are the keets at Linda's just after they arrived:















I have to say Linda really stepped up and took great care of the keets for me until I got home. Ideal Poultry sent the 15 keets and 4 rooster chicks (they use the roosters chicks to help keep the keets warm in travel). Only 1 rooster didn't make it. Linda said that Charlie and his friend gave the chick a nice little funeral and buried him in their backyard. Charlie and Hailey also gave them food water and love. Well, as much love as you can give a bird.

We meet up in the 7Eleven parking lot and did the keet transfer. All the babies were doing fine. Got them home and put them in their makeshift home- a deck storage box. We're still waiting for the shed to come.

The dogs- especially Bones- are interested in the chirping little pooping machines that are known as keets. Bones, as you can see in this picture is obsessed. He just sits and stares at them- probably thinking what a good chase they will be when they get bigger.....going to have to work on that one.













So for now everything is going along smoothly. All the keets, plus the rooster chicks are doing well. No one has died....yet. But I have to say, when I ordered 15 keets, didn't really think that they'd all survive.... We'll see how this goes. We're still working on what we are going to do with the roosters- Rick is standing firm on the notion that we will not keep them. So either I find them a home or he "takes care of them". The best had to be the other day when he tried to convince Matt to do it, but thankfully Matt refused....

While I was taking some photos this morning, I snapped a few of Stormy (the cat). When I looked at them I was surprised to find this one:














I think that says it all.....
Have a great day!
Lisa