Crying foul and holy cow

I visited my family in Hickory on Monday and Tuesday and had quite the farm experience...

We debated which cow would have her calf first... The key is to see which one has the most swollen udders. If the udders are so full they're sticking out sideways, it'll be soon.

There's a mule with a hurt foot. Her leg has to be wrapped every day to keep it from getting infected. She's an absolute doll, even though she's sweaty. She has to be tranquilized every time her bandage is changed, which is interesting... she gets all woozy... it's funny... but changing the bandages is challenging because you have to catch her as she goes to sleep and hold her head so she doesn't try to get back up before they're changed. I volunteered for head holder duty the other night.. and quickly learned why no one else volunteered. Eau de mule isn't the sexy scent of the year.

But the most exciting farm happening was by far the wild goose - er - guinea chase.

In case you don't know what guineas are, here's a link to a site with pictures and info. on the birds.

We moved 47 guinea chicks to a different pen late Monday night. Tuesday afternoon my sister called in hysterics. While she was working on the guinea cage the entire door fell off... and out hopped/flew the entire cage full of guineas. They immediately scattered. Some went running, others flew up into trees.

The guinea rescue started shortly thereafter.

My sister and some of my family members tried tracking down the birds on the lam. They caught a few near the pen by scaring them out from their hiding places in the brush and trees nearby. They rounded up a few of the easy ones, then started looking for the more clever ones that had gone off further.

Shortly before dark, fewer than 15 out of the original 47 escapees had been found. That's when we started getting clever (and desperate). We teamed up - one person with a dog, one person with a fishing net... and one person per team to laugh hysterically while the others crashed through the woods behind the chicken lot. As it turns out, my aunt's dog is really good at finding them (a newly discovered talent), and we were able to capture another six.

I took some cell phone video footage that I'm going to try to upload... it might (and might not) work. Just in case it doesn't, I pulled some videos off YouTube so you'll know what kind of animals we were up against.

Here's what a guinea sounds like:


Here's what they do: