Rest in peace, little Bo

Little Bo, always the runt, but with so much spirit
She had my heart from the start

And so it ends – the Guinea Fowl Chronicles, which started back in October 2008 when little Bo Peep and her family arrived in our garden.

You’ve taken the journey with me, watched over little Ms Bo and applauded her spirit and determination to survive. You’ve fretted with me when she was ill, cheered as she grew. I believe she found a place in all your hearts.

And now she is gone.

Ms Bo's family
October 2008

Ms Bo, waiting for her handout of maggots

You’ll recall that in the post I did before going on holiday, I said that Ms Bo had been seen in the garden again. She came back almost daily with the Ba-Kaaka Nostra – but she was never really part of them.

In the garden in May, free at last

Keeping company with the usual suspects

As the winter settled in bringing cold, driving rain so the guinea fowl became more aggressive about feeding. Bo, because she hadn’t been able to integrate with the flock, found it increasingly difficult to feed. I’d put food out separately for her, but as soon as she started to eat one of the males would chase her away. Two weeks ago, it struck me that she’d lost body mass.

She started to stay in the garden, keeping clear of the Ba-Kaaka Nostra and other flocks that come here to feed. She’d feed when she could, with me standing guard a few meters away, then she’d lie in the sun, trying to keep warm. But it soon became obvious that not only was she losing weight, she was also ill. She was increasingly hunched, cold and listless and she clearly had a gut problem. She took to lying around in the sun, barely eating.

I found some darkling beetles and enticed her to eat. But the food wasn’t enough with bitter cold of the night. Last Wednesday I managed to catch her – and that was a bad sign. She was feathers and bone – her body mass all gone, the strength she’d had when she’d escaped and left here, wittled away to nothing. She didn’t even struggle.

I brought her inside and popped her in the big dog traveling cage. Her eyes dulled almost immediately. You could see her thinking, “Oh no, not this again, not caged.”

We kept her warm and fed her on mealworms and grain – but she really wasn’t terribly interested. I cleaned her beak for her because she was too lethargic to do so herself. She slept for most of Thursday. On Friday I took her to the avian vet.

“I’ll do what I can,” said the vet, “we’ll give her a chance. I’ll incubate her, give her antibiotics and vitamins. I’ll deworm her and crop feed her if necessary. I’ll give her the best care I can. And I’ll call you on Sunday evening.”

She called me on Monday morning. Ms Bo had died a few hours before. She’d perked up on Saturday the vet said, gone down again on Sunday. The vet was going to ask to keep her a few days longer. But Ms Bo took the decision for herself – and for her, it was probably the right one.

She never wanted to be a pet or a domesticated guinea fowl but likewise, she couldn’t survive on her own in the surburban “wild”. So she left and went home.

Ms Bo is buried in the herb garden, under the asparagus fern were she used to sleep with her mother when she was a tiny keet. There’s a hole in our hearts and the garden seems an emptier place without her. But she had her moments of contentment, her culinary delights and a taste of freedom.

“Think,” said D, “She was able to roost in the gum tree and watch the sun rise. What a thrill that must have been for her.”

Rest in peace, little Bo.

Ms Bo - last Wednesday October 2008 - 15 June 2009

This, that and more of the other

The spiraling of a geranium seed

I apologise, I'm being a rotten blogger at present. Network connections that are doing a startling imitation of a Jack in the Box, not feeling too well and the prospect of two huge manuscript rewrites have stunned me into a frenzy of inactivity. Add to that the fact that the young guinea fowl keets are dropping like flies, and you'll gather that all is not exactly sparkly in the Vanilla Goddess's garden.

We suspect a virus or parasite must have got the young guineas - they are dying at the rate of one a day or every second day. It is too pathetic to watch and there is little we can do. They are impossible to catch while they are well and by the time we can catch them it's too late to do anything. On top of that, they've taken to falling into the pool and I've rescued two in the last two days - dried them off carefully, warmed them up and discovered they smell utterly awful - a sort of sickly sweet, cloying smell that hangs around them - the scent of death, I guess one might say. Their numbers have gone from 13 to four or five in about two weeks. The parents are becoming increasingly twitchy - and who can blame them - and they can't make up their minds if I'm friend or foe. Even Mama Guinea has now taken to trying to attack me - flying straight at me the other day, claws outstretched as I fished a baby from the pool.

At least Ms Bo hasn't succumbed to whatever is ailing the keets and is flourishing and getting feistier by the minute on a diet of maggots, mealworms, cutworms, earthworms and other things that go wriggle and bump in the night (along with seed, corn and greens).

Meanwhile, instead of getting on with my rewrites - which feels rather like trying to eat a gargantuan elephant - I'm trying to write a children's short story for a local anthology and am getting utterly nowhere. What started as a children's story of 1000 words, has morphed into something quite different and more than double the length, filled with African deities, an inept wizard and a creature resembling the Ba-Kaaka Nostra. I worry myself sometimes, really I do!

I'm afraid blogging is likely to remain erratic for a while yet - my muse went off on her Christmas holiday and hasn't been seen since. This is, as you can imagine, of no earthly use in the face of two rewrites. If you should see her, please ask her to return home.

Do please bear with me and hopefully things will return to normal in the not too distant future. I live in hope - you may as well join me!

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these...

Sunset at Scarborough beach

The last sunset of 2008

The Guinea Fowl Chronicles: Bo's Christmas Present and The Ba-Kaaka Nostra...

According the avian vet, Bo needed a friend.
“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 Cuddling

On 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?

Oh Woe, Bo - no, no, no - it's Yo, Bo!

Erk, what a few days it's been. Ms Bo woke up very, very poorly on Saturday morning - so much so that we thought she was at death's door. I sat with her on my lap most of the morning until we could get an appointment with the local vet. Of course, the local vet had never had to deal with a guinea fowl before and kept rushing out to his colleague to ask about various lumps and bumps he found on Ms Bo's anatomy. None of these comings and goings encouraged us very much and Ms Bo was deeply indignant about the whole business especially when the vet shoved a thermometer up her whazoo (cloaca to those of you avian and anatomically-minded sorts). Ms Bo's eyes sort of crossed and she decided the better part of valour was to play possum, which, after a mighty squawk, she did. Then it was a shot of antibiotics, followed a vitamin injection that elicited a shriek of protests. Then Ms Bo was weighed - all of 110g of her.
"Come back tomorrow," the vet said.
And so on Sunday we repeated the whole business by which time Ms Bo was a whole lot feistier and less inclined to cooperate.
"Make an appointment to see our avian vet on Tuesday," said the vet who acknowledged he knew absolutely nothing about guinea fowl. "And bring her back tomorrow for another jab of antibiotics."

So, this morning Ms Bo finally got to see not just one avian vet, but two. And clearly they spoke Guinea. I was rushing about like a headless chicken doing grocery shopping while D did the concerned parent thing. He said Bo was like a lamb with the two avian vets, who fussed her and loved her and told her she was totally wonderful. It turned out all the lumps and bumps are normal to guinea fowl anatomy. They reckoned Ms Bo was doing just fine. They provided hints on how to get her to feed more effectively. They suggested that we get her a "friend" - a chicken chick - or, they said, if another abandoned guinea fowl chick was brought in, could they call us.
"Yes, absolutely," said D, eternally a sucker for a lost cause.
Frankly, I was surprised he resisted the vets' attempts to foist an abandoned hamster on to him. Were it not for the fact that we do have plans to leave SA sooner rather than later, I rather suspect we'd now be fostering said hammie.
Ms Bo had another vitamin shot, she's to get more oral antibiotics, she's been given vitamin powder and we've been told that if she's made it this far, she'll make it, per se. Whew! Relief and cheers all round.
I do, however, suspect that Ms Bo is going to be with us for the long term - her and whatever chicken we get to keep her company. I'm just wondering how Atyllah the Hen and Granny Were are going to take to this bit of news. Will it be praise for the Goddess Vanilla or will it be utter scorn for humans who clearly have no idea what they're doing!

And just to keep you amused - some recent antics from the wild menagerie...

A guinea (the resident pair) got into the cage one day... his wife was not impressed.
"Harold," clucked Maude, "what in the name of all that is corn are you doing in there?! Come out now before they put you in the pot!"

A new crop of chicks have found their way into the garden...

Mom, why's this chick in a cage?

The usual suspect, trying to find a way of breaking and entering... incorrigible!

A gathering of guineas - the new chicks, and Bo's family and all the other usual suspects

But on that note of Bo's happy and encouraging progress, let me take the opportunity to wish you and yours a very happy, blessed, loving and fun-filled festive season - whether you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Rohatsu, Ramadan and Eid ul Adha, the Winter or Summer Solstice (yes, a bit late on some of those, I know!). And I hope none of you are having turkey...

Reflections from my Christmas Tree

The Guinea Fowl Chronicles, Ms Bo's Beau...

Ms Bo... not a very big peep

Ms Bo, it seems, in addition to her usual entourage, has a beau. Well, he’s either that or he’s appointed himself as part time Father Protector. He’s a lone male guinea, whose mate died last year, after she’d been in some kind of accident that had partially severed her leg. We’d have caught her and taken her for treatment if we could have, but she was far too traumatised. The hen’s leg finally fell off and she and her mate pretty much lived in the safety of the garden for a few months before she disappeared. He spent weeks wandering around aimlessly and is now a daily visitor to the garden and seems to have become quite attached to Ms Bo.

Ms Bo and her beau...

Ms Bo's entourage

Last week I discovered that on top of the black and rufous-chested sparrowhawks and the neighbourhood cats, Ms Bo has an additional predator to worry about – a black headed heron. Herons will evidently munch anything up to the size of a dove. Since Ms Bo appears to be a dwarf guinea fowl, she’d make a suitable snack. Father Protector aka The Beau, happened to be in the garden the day the heron appeared. Up he went on his toes, spread out his wings and flapped them vigorously. Of course, the heron just ignored him, until Father Protector proceeded to herd the lurking beast away from Bo’s cage.

Bo's Beau seeing off the evil heron...

There, that got rid of him!

Ms Bo also has another guinea couple who just don’t seem to know what to make of her. They have hung out in the garden for the past few months – and now that Bo’s family are infrequent visitors the Guinea Couple hang around her cage most of the day, the hen constantly pecking at Bo through the mesh. This morning they were both lying at her cage, waiting for her to be brought out and have subsequently spent the last couple of hours obsessing over her. I do honestly wish I spoke better Guinea so I could make the necessary enquiries!

As for Ms Bo…well, she remains a Very Small Bird. Her siblings, who occasionally come to visit, are now huge. They’ve got their iron-grey spotted feathers and you can see the beginnings of their combs. The size difference is simply absurd. The curious thing is that Ms Bo seems just fine. She eats like a ravening horde, pootles around her cage, chats to herself and remains decidedly feisty of spirit. D is convinced she’s growing, just very slowly - I think he’s being optimistic. Our zoologist friend just reckons she’s a “dwarf”. Personally, I’m still hoping for a last minute growth spurt, but I suspect I may be being optimistic too.

Bo and her brother - little and large...

Bo's Brother - he ain't heavy, he's my brother...

Bo's mother, her brother and the usual suspect...

Ms Bo on the hop...

This weekend Villa Beau Bo aka the Peep Palace will be getting an extension, so Bo will have still more space in which to shout the odds. Meanwhile, our mealworm cultivation project having proved to be a disaster and earthworms containing too high a tannin content, D is now cultivating maggots. I know, don’t ask. Still we have discovered that maggots make a fine meal for a small bird – and I think they’re probably better than some of the bugs I’ve been finding for her. I mean, for heaven’s sake, last week I had to stick my finger into her mouth to dislodge a bug that she’d snarfed down too rapidly. I would really prefer not to have to do that again. It’s bad enough trundling down to the greenbelt at the end of the road with a net and collecting box to harvest grasshoppers and having people look at us askance and ask, “Um, exactly what are you doing?” Ah well, eccentric is as eccentric does, I guess, and we have a guinea chick to rear.

I'm back - and the guinea fowl chronicles continue...

A family visit

So... did ya miss me? Not too much, I hope?! Well, I'm back. In one piece, much mended - still a bit achey but nothing remotely drastic. A week of physiotherapy saw me right and let me tell you, being one handed for a week - with the non-dominant hand - was no fun at all. Mind you, it's good for weight loss - couldn't cook and struggled to eat.

I owe Karen over at Border Town Notes a meme - don't worry, I haven't forgotten, I'll do it next post.

Meanwhile a quick update on Ms Bo - who is definitely a Ms now that we can tell her voice. By that I mean this: female guineas go "ba-kaak", male guineas just make a "chi chi chi" sound which sounds a lot like machine gun fire. Ms Bo is making small and sweet ba-kaak sounds. At least that's confirmed.

Her family, who've been absent for a good few weeks finally turned up again last week. Yikes! You should see the size of her two remaining siblings. Huge. More than double her size, and not far off adult size - you can see for yourself...

So much bigger than me...

He ain't heavy, he's my brother...

You can tell from the pics how small, by comparison, little Bo Peep is. Worrying. However, I'm told by the rather wonderful man over at the Guinea Fowl International Association, who has kinda of befriended me - or rather Ms Bo, I suspect! - that even keets (chicks) which are slow to develop like this, can still make it. Our zoologist friend echoes the sentiment. True, in the wild, Ms Bo would not have survived, but there's no reason for her not to make it, living the protected and cosseted life with us. So yes, this means we are still grubbing in the compost for bugs and worms and Ms Bo has an insatiable appetite. However, it seems to be a case of trying to find the balance. I'm kinda hoping that now that the International Guinea Fowl Association have found us (oh yay for the great interwebby thing!), they will offer advice on what we need to do - even though Ms Bo is a wild bird and most of their birds are captive bred. And I have to tell you, I didn't realise there so many different "looks" for guinea fowl!

Meanwhile, in case you're wondering if it's snowing down here, it is most certainly not.

Collared Dove taking a cooling dip in the water feature!

Yesterday was 35 degrees C! and we woke up this morning to a mountain swathed in smoke and the smell of bush fire drifting on the breeze. My kitchen counter tops are covered in ash but I can't see where the fire actually is because the mountain is mostly obscured by the smoke. I think it's going to be a bad summer in this regard, it just feels like the mountain is ready to go up in flames. I do so hope people having picnics on the mountain will be careful.

Have you met Miss Bo...

A brief musical interlude with Miss Bo and I... (original music courtesy of Richard Rodgers, original lyrics, not the ones below, courtesy of Lorentz Hart). Please play the audio clip, it jollies up this post no end...

Villa Beau Bo/Palais du Bo/Casa Bo/Peep Palace
A home by any other name

Have you met Miss Bo?

Have you met Miss Bo? Someone said as we shook hands,
She was just Miss Bo to me.
And then I said, Miss Bo, I'm a girl who understands,
You're a fowl who must be free.
And all at once, she peeped, and all at once she meeped,
And all at once I felt I knew Miss Bo intimately.
And now I've met Miss Bo, and we'll keep on meeting till she flies,
Miss Bo and I.



Have you met Miss Bo? Someone said as we shared worms.
By then Miss Bo and I were family.
And then I said, Miss Bo, you're a girl without concerns,
you know one day you'll be free.
All at once Miss Bo pecked my hand, and all at once Miss Bo took the stand,
And all at once I realised Miss Bo owned me.
And now we know how things between us stand,
Miss Bo and I.

"What," asked Granny Were, nudging me with her beak in a way best described as indelicate, "are you feeding this chick? Huh?"
"Mixed grains, seed, crushed peanuts and the odd crushed and shelled snail," I replied, quivering under her beady gaze.
"What? No worms, no bugs, no beetles, no grubs?"
I shook my head and chewed my lip.
"Shame on you!" squawked Granny, clipping me roundly about the ear. "Get yourself out there and start looking for bugs and beetles this minute!"

Since that conversation, D and I have spent and inordinate amount of time grubbing in the compost heap, cultivating mealworms and darkling beetles, and hunting down slugs. And Miss Bo has proved to be a right piggy. As soon as she sees one of us appear with the jar, she's over like a shot and the poor unoffensive beetle is wolfed down before you can say mopani worm! You'll get the idea from the pictures below...

Grubbing in the compost

Ooh bugs!

Wait, Bo, I'll give them to you.

Don't worry, I'll take them right out of the jar! Darkling beetles, yum-yum!

A bird on the shoulder is worth two in the, er...

An evening cuddle, Miss Bo and I.

Oh by the Great Corncob... Uninvited Houseguests!

Chicken with Attitude... and on a rescue mission. Oh boy...

I was gently swimming towards consciousness after a good night’s snooze when I heard a huge splash outside. Something had fallen in the pool. But it wasn’t a small something, like a squirrel, no this was much, much, much bigger. My heart quivered. I’d heard that kind of splash once before. It was the splash of something round and silver and about the size of a… well, the size of a Novapulsian spacepod. I knew, in the interest of intergalactic relations, I should get up and help but I couldn’t bear the thought. Instead I pulled the duvet over my head and pretended to be dead.
The front door opened, and someone clicked across the tiles and headed towards the bedroom.
“You can come out of there!” snapped a voice.
“I’m ill,” I muttered, “And it’s contagious.”
“Don’t lie to me, ever. You know I know when you’re telling porky pies!”
The duvet was unceremoniously yanked off my trembling form and I found myself staring into a pair of dark glinting eyes.
“The word is,” rasped the voice of Atyllah the Hen, Chicken with Attitude, dangerously close to my ear, “that you’ve kidnapped and are holding captive a young fowl. I don’t know what you were thinking Vanilla, but this is not acceptable. It contravenes every multiversal code we ever taught you. Shame on you!”
“I didn’t…” I began, and then realised that it depended entirely from which perspective you looked at Bo’s rescue. “Look,” I said trying again, “It’s not like that.”
“Oh really,” said Atyllah, “then explain to me how it is.”
Somewhere down at the other end of the house I heard a loud, PFRRRRT! The fruity smell of ancient beans drifted up the passage.
“Oh you didn’t!” I exclaimed.
“Couldn’t be helped,” said Atyllah, gazing at a well-manicured claw. “When she heard what you’d done, Granny Were insisted on coming along so she could help set things to rights.” She gave me a wily and knowing look down her beak and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“She’s not cross, is she?” I mumbled.
“What do you think?”
I groaned. “Honestly,” I said, “it’s really not how you think it is.”
“So you said, and I’m still waiting for the explanation.”
I heard the kitchen cupboards open and the sound of scuffling.
“She won’t find any beans or corn in there, you know,” I said.
“It’s not going to stop her from trying,” remarked Atyllah.
“I don’t suppose you brought Great-Aunt Aggie with you,” I asked hopefully, praying for some “balance”.
Atyllah sighed. “You know full well that Aunt Aggie took on the altered form of a pure energy being when she joined the Andromedans.”
I nodded.
“But of course, she can join us telepathically.”
“Oh good.”
“I’m still waiting you know.”
“Look, there was a storm, this chick wasn’t fledged,” I said hurriedly – speaking loudly so that my voice would travel down the passage to the kitchen. “The others had fledged the day before, had taken to the trees. This poor mite was still grounded and she was just not going to survive the storm. We did the decent thing. We rescued her, took her in. By the time the storm had passed, her family were gone – and it turned out later that only two chicks, the biggest, had survived the storm. If we’d left her out there she’d never have made it.”
“Uhuh. And you’ve kept her, why? You’re not thinking of fattening her up for Christmas, are you?” Atyllah shot me a beady look.
“Of course not. At this point she’s abandoned. She’s tiny and she still can’t fly properly. We’re doing what we believe is the decent thing. As soon as she’s big enough, we’ll set her free.”
“You know if it was any other human telling me this, I wouldn’t believe them.”
I sighed, relieved. “Thanks, Atyllah.”
“Oh, don’t think you’ve got off that lightly. If there is a young fowl to be raised, you’re not doing it alone. It’s going to be done properly.”
“What do you mean?” I asked nervously.
“It means we’re staying to help.”
“Both of you?” I asked, groaning inwardly.
“Uhuh.”
“Oh.”
“Oh pul-lease, don’t look so miserable, anyone else would be grateful for the assistance.”
“Yes, they would,” crowed a voice from the doorway.
“Hello, Granny,” I said weakly and tried to pull the duvet over my head again.

So there you have it. And I thought D and I were getting along just fine in raising little Bo. Now Atyllah and Granny Were have turned up from Novapulse and are weighing in with their expert advice. Oh by the Great Corncob, as if I needed more drama. Will someone just remind me when we come up to full moon. We’ll need to truss Granny to keep her out of harm’s way. Harm to everyone else that is. I don’t even want to think of the effect on Bo when Granny goes lunar and does the full werechicken number. Still, the old bird might come in handy in dealing with the sparrowhawk… and Mrs Stroppy. Now that could well be a sight worth witnessing.

Villa Beau Bo - Bo's new accommodation - we hope she likes it!
And yes, it's been a weekend of sawing, hammering, planing and varnishing.