![A guinea fowl took up residence near a pair of automotive businesses in “downtown” Pungo this past month, and some of the workers have left it corn, bread and water. For roughly two weeks, the creature, which seems to be reasonably friendly, has walked the lots and rested in the shade beneath trucks and cars. [John-Henry Doucette/The Princess Anne Independent News]](https://princessanneindy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/gf2-1-1024x682.jpg)
PUNGO — In July, a guinea fowl took up residence between two automotive businesses, Pungo Service Center and Ted’s Automotive, not far from the Pungo stoplight.
Men at both businesses said they aren’t sure where it came from. Some said it had been there a couple days, others a week. And it sure hasn’t left.
If nothing else, they have a new watchfowl. Guinea hens are known for assertive vocalizing.
“He was over there sleeping last night,” Dennis Gardner, a mechanic at Pungo Service Center, said on Wednesday, July 8. “I threw something away, and he started screaming at me.”
Ron Beverly, who helps at the shop, has seen guinea fowl around the Beach before.
“Not around here,” Gardner noted.
“I’ve seen them in the county,” Beverly said.
Buddy Carroll, owner of Pungo Service Center, said one of the men in the shop started feeding it.
It’s been a diet of bread, corn and water. Why would the fowl leave?
“He’s become a local,” Carroll said.
What do they call it?
“We haven’t named him yet,” Carroll said. “Undecided.”
Not a bad name, Undecided.
“There you go,” Carroll said.
This is the first livestock bird to show up. Recently, a kitten came along, but that one found a home through the veterinary clinic across Princess Anne Road. The kitten was wild and hard to catch.
That one got a name.
“You don’t want to print it,” Carroll said.
Other than that?
“No llamas, no mules,” Carroll said. “Just the guinea and the cat.”
Outside the window, the guinea fowl sat under a Ford pickup truck on the lot at Ted’s, not far from the afternoon traffic of Princess Anne Road.
“He better not run out into that road,” Beverly said.
Next door, Ted Sprouse, owner of Ted’s, said the fowl seemed like somebody’s pet.
“He acts like he’s your friend,” he said.
Some of the men thought the fowl might be from the mounted patrol barn, but officers stopping by to pick up their cars said they didn’t have any there.
So it looked like Undecided was staying put in the automotive area of downtown Pungo.
City Animal Control Supervisor Meghan Conti said its not all than uncommon for livestock birds to wind up at the shelter. In early July, there were a dozen fowl, though not guinea fowl, at the city shelter.
Animal control works to adopt the animals, which are recovered for a number of reasons. Some, like the Pungo resident, are loose, but others are turned in by owners or removed due to abuse cases.
If someone has a livestock bird of unknown origen show up, Conti said, they can always call animal control, and they’ll come to get it.
“Normally that would happen in the evening time, when they’re roosting,” she said.
What if you and the fowl are getting on?
“There’s nothing against the law about not calling animal control about a guinea hen that wants to take residence,” she said.
