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19-05-2003, 05:20 PM

In article , wrote:

On Wed, 14 May 2003 23:57:27 -0500, jammer j@mmer wrote:

On Thu, 15 May 2003 00:44:01 -0400, "Chip G."
wrote:

I'm considering getting guinea fowl for pest control. Does anyone have
any experience with them? Any suggestions?

I have had geese and pigeons. If they are anything like those two,
they are MESSY and will ruin a yard with their excrement.

Several years ago we had a scandiavian neighbor who owned both a pair
of ducks AND geese. Boy what a racket the geese put up (I also ran at
them with the dog when they snuck across the woods into our
property...they really could run fast)...that was long before I
appreciated their ecological benefits such as slug and tick control.

These days Im thinking of getting my *own* pair of ducks, but the new
neighbor (in the same house as the old ones

) is of the same
mentality I was

She's not too keen on having ducks waddle through;
the tables have turned.

Dan

When I was very small, I had a pet gander who'd follow me about through
the rabbitry & gardens & yards, a lovely fellow, he'd once had a harem,
but now he had only me.

Our next door neighbor was a crazy woman who built a ten foot fence around
her property to cut herself off from neighbors on all sidees, with whom
she had sundry on-going battles or was suing over this or that bit of
nonsense that never got her anywhere but ostracized. She once gave me a
bowl of jello, though, & not understanding why all the adults on the block
hated her guts, I kind of liked her.

My gander found a way down a hillside & back up the other side of her
gigantic fence, so he could eat slugs in her never-mowed bright green
meadow-lawn. She told me he pooped on her walk, & if I didn't keep him out
of her yard she'd eat him. I assured her he was only doing a good deed by
eating her slugs. And anyway, how could a small child extend her ten foot
fence down the hillside for her.

Then one day my gander was gone, & out the back door of her house down the
hillside were all his plucked feathers & his head & feet. She really had
eaten a child's pet! And after that I shared the adults' dislike of her.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/