The guinea fowl have settled in. They are very entertaining. They are constantly patrolling around the house and carrying on. Two disappeared a week after they arrived and have not been since since. A tantalizing guinea fowl feather was left down along the river, but there was no sign of a bird kill-site, so maybe they were kidnapped, or maybe they just went off on their own.

Of the three remaining, one has been incubating a clutch of eggs for the last month. The chicks finally started hatching last week. Guinea fowl eggs are very tough, and it was interesting to see all the chicks that hatched had chipped beaks from bashing their way out. (Two chicks failed to get out of the shell, which was sad, and a few others didn't open.)

I kept an eye on them, but avoided getting too close as we try and intervene as little as possible and the mother was very defensive. I made sure there was chick crumble and water in shallow pans available as the clutch hatched out over a couple of days. Eventually there were 14 chicks. The mum and eggs were in an enclosed chook yard with chookhouse. Fully meshed roof, no falcons could get in and only small birds.

But it didn't go well. One dead chick. I assumed the mother wasn't leading the chicks to food and water so I scattered crumbs around the nest to make it easer to find. The next day two dead chicks, then three. The day there were four chicks sprawled in the straw bedding I decided to intervene. I went in to collect them, two were dead and two feebly alive. But the agitated mum wasn't putting up with me there, and fluffing up to look bigger, screeching madly, she flew at my face repeatedly.

At that point a big Eastern Brown snake emerged from the straw and started moving through the chookhouse.

The chicks weren't hungry, they were cold! She was getting off the nest because of the snake intruding, and the chicks were getting chilled.

Its a small space, there's roosting bars at chest height...not a great place for dodging a snake and simultaneously ducking from a crazed bird. I backed out with the chicks in my hand. From there I went to the gate of the chookyard. My dogs were shut out, because I don't trust them with the chicks, but they had heard the ruckus and were agitated, bouncing outside the gate. My fear was the snake would leave the yard and meet the wound-up dogs and it would all go to hell.

So, take the dogs inside, get the chicks into a light box, come back out with the dead chicks and....the snake had, as predicted, left the chook yard and was coming up the driveway, between the house and the shed. My daughter and grand-daughters were in the shed. Last year we had a snake-catcher come and collect a red-bellied black snake, but he's 45 minutes away and this wasn't going to wait. I tossed a dead chick in front of the snake and while it paused and looked at the distraction I dealt with it.

We don't feed kookaburras, owls magpies etc to avoid them becoming dependent on us, but if I ever have, say, a dead mouse (that has not been poisoned) I put them on a fencepost in the vegetable garden. Within a few minutes someone will swoop down and take it away. So, I figured I would get rid of the guinea fowl chicks in the same way. I stepped over the bulbs around the post and balanced the chicks in top, one per post.

Something made me look down when I was at the second post.

My heart stopped. Curled up in the sun in the small open area in the bulb garden was a large red-bellied black snake. I had missed standing on it by millimetres. My boot was actually touching it.

When I got back inside my wife asked me, "Are you OK?". The answer is, "No, I am NOT OK!"

To ice the cake the rest of the chicks died overnight.

Hard to find a positive in this story.....