For a tangle of reasons, I will be babysitting seven tiny keets in my condo for a week.
What are keets? I hear some of you asking. They’re baby guinea fowl, and majorly cute when they’re recently hatched, with sweet little peeping voices. Too bad they grow up to be majorly ugly (at least from the neck up). (This image off the Internet is not the mother of the keets I’m tending, but it’s pretty much what she looks like.)
Hey, wait, you say – you have seven cats! Just how long are these bitty little babies going to last?
Quite a while, as it turns out, at least the five that are robustly healthy. There are four brown ones, one of which is feeble and probably won’t last very much longer; two white ones, one of whom is in much better shape than the brownie but not as active as the others; and one pale gray-blue one.
But the cats! Heh. Visit my Webshots album and you’ll see the keet hotel I’ve set up, heat lamp, chicken wire, and water dispenser courtesy of the teenage guy I’m tending them for. You’ll also see the cats getting a good look and (except for Sophie) deciding they want no part of these odd things.
That, of course, could change, which is why the keets are in my office, whose door latches securely, and why the room will be open to feline visitors only while I’m present.
The brown keets will grow up to be what’s called pearl in color – a dark gray, almost black, with white dots all over, like the image I linked to above. They don’t show signs of having the white piebald markings, except for the one that’s very feeble. The white ones will be white. The one very pale keet… hard to tell. Here’s a link to a color chart that has both keet and adult colors. Seems to me the closest match is the opaline color.
They sure are cute little critters.
Ask me after a week if I still think they’re cute.
Later: The weak one still isn’t eating, that I’ve seen, but s/he did drink a little, then try to burrow under the others. Now s/he’s peeping loudly, calling for Mommy, I think, while the others are trying to get some sleep.
Oh, wait, now they’re all awake and feeding. Which involves much pecking, peeping, and scratching.
It’s gonna be a long week. 
