Good Intentions

A Good Wife has the foresight to go to the feed store to pick up bedding and feed for the chooks, who'll be in the care of her Patient Husband while she's off playing at camp all summer.  Knowing the Rampant Educational Opportunities that await behind those heavy glass doors ---plants! critters! tools! commerce!--- a Good Mother  brings a handful of her offspring along for the ride.  While the aforementioned mother blithely debates the merits of grape versus cherry tomatoes , her vigilant spawn rescue an unfortunate sparrow from the masticating maw of the feline-in-residence.  Having accomplished his good deed for the day, her son endears himself to the proprietor (and owner of the bloodthirsty beast) and interrupts the Tomato Quandary to share some noteworthy news.  Proffering cupped---and peeping---hands, he whispers gleefully, "I got a present!"

It's a Guinea Fowl.  By way of endorsement, the girl at the checkout assured us that Guinea Fowl are both loud and stupid, opening up a plethora of potential names for our newest pet.  They're great "watchdogs," she said, and have a quirky tendency to lay their eggs in other animals' dens.

We call it Kit.  Kit the 'keet.  It peeped piercingly through the first two hours of the evening, and was finally soothed to sleep by the sounds of  KIOA: Iowa's Greatest Hits.  Who woulda thunk it?

(And, yes, my camera is back---and all fixed!)