All Creatures Great and Small

“The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated,” said Mark Twain. I thought we had had a loss in the neighborhood, when I surmised one of the most eccentric members had died. After all, I never saw her in her yard anymore, nor strolling across the street oblivious of the traffic she might be holding up. Oddly missing from our landscape was Ms. Guinea Hen.

All that seemed to remain of her was a metal replica of her silhouette held in the ground by an anchoring rod on the lawn of her owner’s house. In fact, I saw someone kneeling beside the likeness and digging in the ground one day. What was I to think, except that I was witnessing a burial ceremony?

After at least a year, I hear tonight that the guinea is alive and well. My daughter-in-law was taking supper to our son who is doing night-shift field work at the nearby refinery as part of a “turn-around”. Near the gate to the plant, Pebbles, their dog, began to bark out the car window at something that caught his eye. The guinea was indignantly ruffling her feathers at the dog and screeching her peculiar squawk.

Maybe she thought one dog in the neighborhood was enough, considering guineas are often used as “watchdogs”, due to their distinctive warning sound, a staccato-like, repetitious grating guaranteed to drive away any intruder.

I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I saw the unusual-looking fowl when we moved here a few years ago. Looking something like an army helmet on foot, it patrolled like a sentry around its territory, even wandering into a grassy area buffering the plant from the residential area. I suppose that’s where it has been hanging out during all the months when I thought it was among the departed. Evidently it was good pickings with plentiful bugs, ticks, ants and other insects among the trees and grasses in the unpopulated park.

According to the story told my husband by the owner of the speckled bird, the guinea showed up the day that their watchdog of eleven years died. The lady said she always thought God sent her the guinea to take its place. In that case, our feathered friend might be around for a long time!