What Empty Nest?

My neighbors have a lot of animals. They have at least twenty goats, a donkey, a turkey, a flock of chickens and at least two or three dogs. They used to have a llama, too, but he's moved to Georgia where he is gainfully employed, guarding sheep. My neighbors honestly love animals. I love animals too, and am quite happy to live next door to so many. They are interesting and cute and I don't have to feed them or worm them or band them, which for those of you are not in the know about animal husbandry, means that they put a tight band around the young male goats' testicles to prevent them from developing.
Uh-huh, yep, that's right.
They used to have some pigs over there but they weren't digging the swine thing, so they gave the poor creatures to Mango and his brother Pinot (I'm guessing that's how you spell his name) who are neighbors and who have probably already had a pig roast instead of raising them for pets as my neighbors do.
Such is life in Lloyd.
Last year they acquired at least half a dozen guinea hens, which are big birds who don't fly a lot, but who walk around in a straight line, one after the other, searching for bugs and tasty bits (like new rose bushes), and making a constant chatter which sounds something like Andy Devine would if you put his head in a bucket. Despite the rose-bush eating, I loved the guinea hens. They were the clowns of the neighborhood, always talking as they made their daily parade through the yard.
Then I started noticing that the number of guineas was decreasing. Soon, their ranks had sunk to only three. But still, three was a good number.
And suddenly, there are only two.
Now guineas are not small birds. They're largish. Not as big as a grown turkey or an ostrich, but still, I figure one guinea could feed a hungry family of five for a day or two at least. And I don't know what's been after them, but obviously, something has. They're not the brightest birds in the world, I'll tell you that. Every night when it's time for them to go home, they spend hours, quite literally, running up and down beside the fence that separates their home from our yard, obviously having forgotten they can fly. I know they can fly because I've seen them do it when my dogs run out to chase them.
But they seem to forget this every evening and the fence line is covered in their feathers which they drop in their frantic search for the magical opening they've forgotten isn't there since the night before.
So maybe an owl or a hawk got the missing ones, although I don't really see how this is possible, or maybe some of them wandered off on their own and got lost. I don't know. But the fact is, there were a bunch and now there's only two.
And the inventory of goats and chickens and large animals next door varies from month-to-month and year-to-year but that's to be expected as animals are known to reproduce (they don't band all the males) and sometimes die and sometimes get sold. Or go up to Georgia to do battle with coyotes on sheep farms.
Whatever.
And all of this leads up to the fact that it wasn't eight months ago that I wrote about having an empty nest as my youngest child was leaving for college. I wasn't sure how that was going to work out, having been a mother with kids at home for over thirty years. Frankly, it worked well for the fifteen minutes that the nest was actually empty.
College is over for the summer, the baby-daughter is back home, and yesterday my just-married daughter and her new husband moved their clothes and toothbrushes and pillows in and took over the second bedroom upstairs. They had been living with his mama, grandmama and brother in order to save money to buy a house but we need the groom to help us with some painting over here and, well, it seemed like a good idea.
So the empty nest thing didn't last very long and it's time for me to get my BIG pots out again and here we go- another phase in life, another shuffling around of the toothbrushes in the bathroom and beers in the refrigerator and schedules and dietary needs and nothing stays the same and the only thing you can count on is change.
The married kids are doing their best to house-hunt and my husband is helping them so they won't be here forever. They'll eventually find a house, pack up all those wedding presents and move into their own place, the youngest daughter will go back to college and it'll just be me and the man again.
In the meantime, here we are, a family. Diverse and interesting, just like the critters next door, and I'm going to enjoy the hustle and bustle that will result from having baby birds back in the nest.
It does remind me somewhat of the guineas, running back and forth beside the fence, looking for a way back in to the safety and dependable eats at home, but who always seem to find their way back out again every morning to range around for the sweet and unexpected pickin's to be found in the great big world.
Kids come and they go.
And Mom and Dad stay right here, making sure the light is on if someone's coming in late, throwing the feed out, providing a safe place where the hawks and owls can't swoop down and grab anyone unawares until they find a place of their own to roost.
And since we might want grandchildren one day, we won't band any of them, either.
Nope. We just show them the way to jump back over the fence, turn the light off and all go to bed.