The squash vine borer has decimated my prize zucchini plant. It was so beautiful and productive. It is now in the zucchini plant afterlife. Sigh. RIP zucchini plant. RIP.
In other news, we found Gus Gus - and, unlike my zucchini plant, she's alive! Today marked day 36 that Gus has been missing (the turkey incubation period is only 28 days) so I called on Seamus to do a search and rescue mission in the poplar forest behind the coop. Amazingly, he found her alive and well sitting on six very stinky, rotten eggs. We candled them just to be sure and then removed them from under her and put them in the compost. We picked up a hissing Gus Gus and put her near the feeder inside the coop.
Determined to be a mother; however, Gus Gus was not ready to admit defeat. She left the coop, somehow managed to steal two duck eggs (unfertilized since we don't even have a drake) and two chicken eggs, made a new nest, and began sitting on her "babies" again. After a 20 minute search in a new section of the forest, Seamus and I found her a second time and took away her new eggs too. Gus Gus was not pleased and I paid the price of her wrath in wing scratches to the neck.
Gus Gus is now in lock down on the human side of the coop where she will remain for at least a week until her broody instincts abate. I am grateful she is well and somehow managed to survive being outside overnight for over a month given all the predators that could have munched on her. I am relieved that she will now be spending her nights in the warm, safe coop - especially now that the corn is almost ripe which always brings raccoons looking for a midnight snack. And you know what goes perfectly with corn on the cob? A side of turkey.
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