I Caught Me a Keet!

And he/she wasn't happy about it.

To sum up: two weeks ago I bought 4 Guinea keets to help with the Japanese Beetle/tick problem here.  They are annoying, to say the least.  They hop out of the brooder every chance they get, which makes me have to cover the damn thing with wire, which they get stuck in because they jump against it, causing me to change the wire type two times until I found a piece that they couldn't get stuck in.  But, of course, I have to change their water and feed them, so I have to pull up the wire, which causes the keets to jump out again.  And they are fast.  So, if they get out, they're pretty much gone. 

Twice I have gone in in the morning and found one missing, to be found later in the garage, screaming its fool head off.  Once I went in in the morning and found that I had been heating the empty brooder all night, because there was no one in it.   Again, they were in the garage, but when I looked, I could not find them anywhere, and they pretty much came out on their own.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I went to change their water, and they all jumped out.  I didn't even bother trying to catch them, because I never can.  Out they went, into the garage, and presumably, since the door was open, outside.  They were gone all night.  They were gone all morning.  They were not in the garage, anywhere in the gardens outside, in the chicken house, in the duck house---they were nowhere.  I figured that someone had a little meal of them, rolled my eyes, unplugged the heat lamp and went on with my life.  At about 3 o'clock, I hear loud keet screaming.  I come out of the woods where I am working, and hello!  there are four sad, bedraggled, slightly damp keets in the middle of the yard, screaming their heads off.

You'd think they'd be easy to catch after spending the night and day outside in the rain with nothing to eat or drink and in the cold, but no.  They ran like I was trying to eat them.  Which caused me to go to emergency measures--the butterfly net.  That's why the keet above looks SO happy--I scooped the damn thing up.  Ha!  Let me tell you, the day they gave brains out, keets were absent. 

Anyway, they've survived.  I unceremoniously shoved them back into the brooder box and put their lid on.  After they pigged out, this is how I found them:

They are alive, let me assure you.  They've simply passed out.  Dopes.