What did you say? I couldn't hear you...

... the silence is deafening. 

The Pearlies and I parted company on Tuesday.  As much as the noise made me grit my teeth (Kay's hubby said, on Sunday during fencing maneuvers, "what equipment is your neighbor running?"  To which I answered, "Those are the Guineas." - Need I say more?), the final straw came when they decided to gang up on Marie-Claire.  She is my rescued chicken, an older girl with a funny gait due to being raised and confined to a plastic tub in someones living room.  She has worked her way - painfully, at times - up from the very bottom of the pecking order to somewhere closer to the middle.  Somewhere where the rest of the girls ignore her and let her be-bop around unmolested.  Enter the ill-tempered Guineas.  Last week, I caught them cornering her and pecking her head bloody.  That explained why she was loathe to leave the nesting box and was getting pretty skinny.  I had to act as her body guard in the morning and evening, making sure she got food and water, and then delivering her to the safety of the nesting box.  Enough already, as they say on Longuyland. 

A very nice young woman who lives with her husband and daughter on 150 tick-infested acres an hour north of me, came down and we had a Guinea rodeo.  It was ... interesting.  I have the scars to prove it. 

The chickens, who have been clinging to the perimeter of the yard to avoid the dreaded Guineas, raced back and forth and did little feathered versions of the Happy Dance.

I hope the Pearlies enjoy their new home - lots and lots of wide open spaces.  I should have offered their new family my hearing protectors.