The Last Frontier

First, a rant. Then the guineas.

More like, the last straw with Frontier! Frontier is our phone/DSL provider and I've had it. I was so excited when we moved up here and DSL had come to the area just two weeks prior. No more satellite! Woohoo! We had satellite internet in VA and frankly, dial up was faster and more reliable. But the one thing I will say about satellite, is that after a thunderstorm it was usually back up within minutes. I only wish our DSL was that reliable! Our DSL goes out with every bad thunderstorm that comes through. And it seems like I'm the only one to ever report it. Inevitably, I end up getting on the phone with some college kid who, after I tell him the t-storm took it out, I've already done the diagnoses and rebooted my modem several times and it's probably a local outage, he still makes me reboot the darned modem. Then he's surprised that the magical and all powerful reboot didn't do the trick. Sometimes they think I'm even fibbing, just for the attention. The last time I went through this I asked to speak to a manager. The manager was incredibly patient and put a note on my account not to bug me with the usual rebooting routine, which can sometimes take as long as 30 min. This just depends on how far through college the tech on the other end of the phone made it before flunking out from beer bongs.

Eventually, the tech concedes that yes, perhaps it is an area wide outage and not just my modem. Then they put in a ticket and tell me to wait by the phone, a field technician will be calling me shortly. Hours pass, days pass, I keep calling in looking for an update. Sometime after the fourth or fifth call, someone tells me that hey, they found the problem! And guess what? It WASN'T my modem! They always seem so pleased with themselves at this point. Like, hey, I couldn't get your modem to work because it was an area wide outage -- not my fault! But it is your fault that you took days to figure this out instead of just listening to me in the first place. Grrrr! Our DSL went out Friday night, I reported it Saturday morning, and it just came back up around 8pm tonight. And rather than getting anything done today, since I couldn't work, I had to sit by the phone and wait for the technician call. Which never came. Because they found that lightening had taken out some doohickey at the DSL station. I only found this out because I called them again around 4pm (my third call of the day, since they said on Saturday that it should be up by noon today).

Thank you for reading. I feel much better now that I got that off my chest.

Guinea update: things are not well on the guinea front. We lost seven guineas Friday night in the storm!!!! WHY??? We did get an awful lot of rain during the night and there could have been a flash flood under the coop. But why weren't the guineas in the coop where they usually are at night?? Saturday morning I found seven dead, soaking wet, but otherwise untouched little guineas. The remaining six looked fine and were pecking around behind me as I crawled into the pen to pick up the dead ones. BUT, they were not touching the food I had gotten them! I ended up getting more of the same 22% chick grower that they had before because I couldn't find anything with a higher protein. I did buy some 31% fish food pellet that the feed store guy said people fed their fighting cocks. But I had it separated from the other food in the coop, so have no idea why they weren't eating either one.

Rather than have them starve to death, I made the executive decision to let them out today. I opened up a spot in the fence, called them over with my bug bottle, let them come out, then shooed them back in. Let them come out again, then shooed them back in. The breeder said to do this so they would know how to get back in at night. And no one was watching, so I did it five times. I watched them in the yard for about an hour and they seemed very happy and were tearing into the bugs. Then they moseyed into the horse pasture and disappeared for the rest of the day. I assume they went into the woods where it was cooler. Around 6pm they started heading back and stayed awhile in the backyard getting their fill of bugs kicked up from the lawn mower. But something seemed amiss with one of the white guineas. She was lying on the ground with her wings spread out while the others were happily eating. Uh Oh. She'd get up and walk around if we got too close and seemed to be walking fine. I stayed out in the garden and kept an eye on them to make sure none of the cats took the opportunity for a quick meal and to see if they'd head back to the coop for the night.

I was playing twister with one of the pineapple tomatillo plants, trying to get all the little berries without knocking any unripe ones off when I heard Thor sit down behind me. It was a minute or two before I unwound myself from the plant, straightened out my appendages, and turned around. Thor had brought me the white guinea and placed it on the ground behind me. She seemed untouched and very much alive, but she was just lying there. Thor gave me this look that said "Mom, I think it's broken. Can you fix it? (for dinner? with maybe a little gravy?)" I picked her up and she never even squawked. She lay her head on my hand and I felt her heart beat in my palm. Her heart wasn't racing and seemed to be thumping just a tad faster than mine. Here was another decision to be made. Do I take her to the coop for the night or do I find her buddies and put her back with them? She seemed weak and I doubted she'd make it through the night if her buddies decided not to come back to the coop. So into the coop she went. I dipped her beak in the water then placed her on the straw in the highest nesting box. A few minutes later she had hopped down and was at the doorway looking at me. Of course I have bugs for you, little guinea. She gobbled up the Japanese beetles as soon as they fell from the bottle. Dare I hope?