Guineas...and a skunk...

Since ticks have been so numerous this spring, we decided to buy six guinea keets (babies).  Apparently, they love bugs, especially ticks.  They are more challenging to tame than chickens, but we've been reading a book that has tips on raising them and are trying to handle them each day.  

Here's the fawn again near the pool...We've actually seen two that look like twins.

Starting to fill the pool using the house well.  It's slow and we don't
want to overdo it, but we're hoping to get it filled by July 4th.

UGH!!!  I have no idea why Scott is smiling.  We were making great progress and decided to also use the barn's well to speed up the pool filling.  Well, it got pretty muddy after a few hours (it must be a shallow well).  Major setback - we have to drain the pool again (we were about 1/3 full) and now we have this ring of dirt.  It would be nice to have the pressure washer, but my parents are using it at the river...So we drained it again, vacuumed what we could, and started filling again.  The kids really want to swim in their own pool for July 4th.

Incredible.  Connor and I were in the school room this evening straightening up when I noticed that the chickens were running around like crazy in their pen.  I thought I saw a slinking black animal scoot across the driveway towards them and I ran out there (well, I don't run these days - fast walking) to see what was going on.  Connor must've told Scott because he came running from the pool area with a shovel.  The skunk had waddled past the chickens and they are so curious - they crowded to the edge of their fence to check out the unusual animal.  Scott managed to get this photo of the skunk in the neighbor's horse pasture.  Tonight was the third time that we've seen this guy.  I wish we could've gotten a picture of the chickens and the skunk checking each other out!  I think skunks are fond of chicken eggs, so we'll need to be careful....You never know what's going to happen out here!