Intuition-blessing and a curse

 Don't really know where to begin.

 

 

Yesterday (Saturday) was supposed to be a fun day of working together on the farm, then heading to our friend's farm in Princeton to look at some wethers we wanted to add to our flock.  All was lovely, and we picked the two who would suit us best, rushed home but were here after dark, instead of at dusk like we'd planned. The farm was about 120 km away.  I can't believe that on the one day we go out and come home late, the guineas didn't put themselves to bed safe in their aviary in the garage. They were missing when we arrived home with our two new lambs, but we knew there was nothing to be done except hope and wait until morning.

 

We set the two young-uns into Oakley's stall and sat with them for a while--they were pretty freaked out, but friendly enough ot take comfort in some petting and a little bit of food we offered. Oakley wasn't so keen on some new weird sounding creatures in 'his' barn.

 

 

Sunday 5am: we heard the chirp chirp peeps of guineas in the trees. We thought they were ok. Glenn got out of bed right away and opened the garage so they could go in and find food.  When I woke up later he told me only three of them were out there.  We called and called and checked the ditches and under the trees.  No Mayhem. Our morning was supposed to be happy, two new lambs and all. We talked and tried to go over all the possibilities. Raptor? Likely. Except the guineas have eagle eyes themselves. Runaway? Not likely. He was most decidedly the boss. Fight with one of the other guinea roos? Again,  not likely. Ground predator? More possible.

 

 

 

It's not only the loss of one of our beloved creatures that feed the soul of this place, it's that since his loss and presumed death is a mystery, it means we can't learn from it and make our animals safer. 

 

I realized I was a  little shaky from no food, and the adrenaline. My stomach was too off for breakfast, and was for the better part of the day. Yes there is adrenaline when a beast is missing and you are fearing the worst.

 

We just kept working. Checking on animals in silence. It was hot again, so I asked G to check on the Wookie crew.  He came to me and told me Venga-choo (aka Olive, Venga's daughter) was missing. He had locked them up the night before, and let them out in the morning and was sure he'd seen her that morning. He said she'd run out and straight into Mr. Flan's grassy run.  The canary grass out there was 6' tall or higher. I took a stick and beat down the grass, calling and calling.  The only thing that could fit through the fence was a mink.  It couldn't have dragged her through the fence. Not strong enough to pull her over the fence. A raptor would only have been able to get her in front of the chook palace, and we would have noticed a behaviour change in the other hens, would have seen some loose feathers from the attack, and Flan would have raised the alarm, even though he wasn't integrated with that group. All this time we are looking and calling, not panicking, but trying to think like a chook and a predator at the same time. A fox could have jumped over the fence, but again, we know our birds' behaviours, and we just weren't seeing signs that something had happened.

 

We were still so unsure about what was going on. Grieving, and upset since we were planning to bring little Olive over to the Lorpie crew in the backyard where we'd get to know her even better. She didn't have great instincts, wasn't super aware and alert like Wookie, she was naïve and sweet and we wanted to protect her. Her dad was our other beloved roo who we euthanized last year, only months after moving here, when we developed a problem in his trachea. She's always been a little bit extra special.

 

Two missing animals in 24 hours??? We felt like we were under attack, under prepared, and over confident that we'd taken proper precautions.  Just like what had led to Wedge's death.

 

We needed to do something, to feel like we were protecting them from whatever unknown had taken her. 

 

 

 

We had already agreed we'd be integrating the Flan group with Wedge's former ladies before all of this happened.  We decided the best thing to do was get some new electric up, shorten the runs so the chooks couldn't range as far away from shelter, cut the grasses so ground predators have less chance to ambush.

 

Glenn set to work, pulling the electronetting from one area, cutting the long buckwheat he'd grown for them so the fence could fit through it. We'd been looking for her for several hours, it was getting hot, so I decided a little comfort food might help. I made some grilled cheeses and brought them outside.

 

I was helping him set up the new electric in Flan's run, stretching the electric to the right configuration so he'd know where to scythe the long grasses.  All of a sudden crazy half-broody little Venga-Choo sprinted out from the grass--G had almost stepped on her, and her nest of eight eggs she'd been hiding, and sitting on for a while every day, without us knowing. A minute later and he could have scythed her in half.

 

In retrospect, it's a little messed up. Here we were trying to protect them, but if we'd only waited a few hours for her to come back from walkabout, it would have been fine. Instead we were about 60 seconds away from killing her.

 

 

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During all of our searching and worrying and grieving I finally told G something that's been on my mind in the last week. I didn't want him to think I was being paranoid, but I'd been feeling like something bad was about to happen. With all the little chooklets running around etc I felt like our farm would be attracting predator attention. Or something like that...I just felt like something would happen, and I've had these feelings before. Not exactly scientific, but I really should pay more attention, since this has happened before. Glenn has stopped trying to talk me out of these feelings.  He's learned to trust my intuition too.

 

 

I really wish we knew what had happened to guinea Mayhem. He was larger than life. A turkey vulture flew over this morning, and while that's not an unusual occurrence, I have to wonder if he was looking for Mayhem too. I'm still very sad about this, and will be for some time. But right now I still have beasts to take care of, so I'd better get on with it.