“See if you can find another abandoned guinea chick,” she said, “or else a bantam chick.”
So this is what Bo got for Christmas…
Silky Bantam
A silky pekin bantam chick.
Cute, isn’t it. And so tame and docile and with the loveliest voice. (And it loves cuddling – with humans.)
The trouble was, the exercise was not what one could call a success.
First of all we put Chick in Bo’s sleeping cage, next to Bo’s outside cage. At first Bo was fascinated and did her best to break through bars to meet and greet Chick. Cool, we thought, this is going to be a clucking success.
So we popped Chick in Bo’s cage. There were a few wary moments. Chick in one half of the cage, Bo in the other. Then the wariness gave way to curiousity. And then it moved to “not having any of this”. At which point we had Bo on one side of the cage, Chick on the other. Back to back, ready, it looked, for the duel. We decided to leave them to it.
Chick, who is a very confident little bird, just got on with things. It stalked around the cage, ate Bo’s food, deposited several hearty calling cards and scratched in her soil and seed tray until it uprooted most of the seedlings.
Bo meanwhile turned neurotic. She scurried up and down her cage. She hopped onto several high places, hopped down, scurried some more until Chick decided enough was enough and started issuing some powerful pecks to Bo’s back. It should be mentioned that despite being the same age, despite the Pekin Bantam being a “small” sized chicken, Chick was still more than double Bo’s size.
Bo leapt onto her log and meeped. And peeped. And meeped some more. And within ten minutes the Ba-kaaka Nostra flew over the wall.
I have no idea what Bo said but it seemed like every guinea fowl in the immediate vicinity heard the call and arrived.
The Ba-kaaka Nostra were nothing short of awesome - a group of about nine guinea fowl, led by Stoppy Old Fart and The Duchess (an elderly matriarch with attitude). They were dark, hunched and intent - and it may have been my imagination but I swore they were wearing trench coats, fedoras, dark glasses and some of them were carrying violin cases under their wings.
The Ba-Kaaka Nostra... Y'can call me Sal G...They flowed across the lawn like a tide of black oil. They sidled up to the cage and proceeded to inspect and offer comfort. They cast beady eyes on Chick. Chick just looked at them equally beadily and growled.
A beady-eyed Bantam...They offered advice to Bo, who evidently ignored it all and just ran up and down like um, er, a headless chicken.
The Ba-kaaka Nostra moved off and watched. Chick stalked over to Bo and gave her several hearty pecks on the bum.
“Meep,” squeaked Bo.
The Ba-Kaaka Nostra, to a guinea fowl, rose up on their toes and flapped their wings.
It was time to intervene. Bo was removed from her outside cage and brought inside. Chick was left in the outside cage until we realised it was unseasonably cold and Chick, who is a dear little bird, wasn’t happy. So Bo’s outside cage came inside and Christmas Eve saw the family room filled with cages, birds and a lot of bird pooh. Yes, yuck indeed.
Chick spent Christmas day ambling about the backyard, which we’d enclosed. The Ba-kaaka Nostra and several entire guinea families spent the day on the lawn with Bo attempting to redress her neuroses. She wasn’t interested in talking to us and so we spent half the day, between Christmas lunch and present unwrapping, talking to and cuddling Chick.
Chick CuddlingOn Boxing Day Chick was returned to the World of Birds, the sanctuary from which we got her. We were sorry to see her go because she really was a total delight, who taught me that I have the makings of a Chicken Whisperer.
Chick gone goofy from cuddling...With Chicken gone (and sorely missed), Bo’s neuroses has declined and we will just carry on muddling along. We’ll bear in mind, however, that we are being watched. Not just by Atyllah and Granny Were, but also by the inimitable and thoroughly intimidating Ba-kaaka-Nostra.
Y' lookin' at me?
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