Gabble

gabble
verb, intransitive. To talk rapidly and unintelligibly. To utter meaningless sounds.

She knew a stranger was approaching because of the gabble of the guineas as they hunted ticks and insects in the pasture across the road. They rarely sounded an alarm when one of their owners, or she or her husband was moving around outside. That reaction was reserved for the unknown: something or someone who might pose a threat to the flock.

She had learned to rely on the big birds’ judgment. Anything they considered alarming might turn out to be dangerous to her. Slowly, so as not to show any movement that could be seen from outside by someone approaching the house, she arose from the desk and moved to a window that was shielded by a sheer curtain. She didn’t approach the door; she knew it was locked. Age had rendered her paranoid, and even though the road past the house was rarely travelled by anyone outside their tiny community, she had begun to lock herself in the house when she was there alone, and to check the locks several times throughout the day. Every couple of months, you heard of a rural home invasion on the news, and you never knew, did you?

When she recognized the grizzled face of the man coming up the drive, she shuddered, then pressed her lips tightly together and tried to regain her self-possession. When had he gotten out? Why had no one called her?

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.