FarmVille April Showers Spring Countdown: Everything you need to know

Last year, Zynga launched a Spring Countdown in FarmVille, giving dedicated players a way to earn plenty of then exclusive prizes for simply playing the game for 12 days in a row and asking friends for a bit of help. Now a year later, another installment in the Spring Countdown has arrived, this one being tag-lined with "April Showers."

Once again, there are 12 days of prizes ahead of us, with Day 1's prize being the only one available as of this writing. It's an April Flower Patch, and you'll earn it by asking your friends to send you three Wheelbarrows. This is accomplished via a general news item posted on your wall, so if you have plenty of active neighbors, you could finish this day's task in a matter of minutes. If you wish to purchase additional Flower Patches, you can do so for 5 Farm Cash each.

For the next 11 days, a new prize will be given away, but you can unlock the ability to earn further prizes right now for Farm Cash if you don't want to wait. As with previously released countdowns in FarmVille, if you can manage to secure each of the 12 prizes in this event, you'll win a special bonus prize. We're not quite sure what the prize is as of this writing, but we do know that impatient players can find out immediately by buying it outright for 195 Farm Cash (that number will decrease as you earn each daily item).

FarmVille: Adopt your free Spotted Pink Skunk before it's too late!

Adding a bit of whimsy to FarmVille this week is a new lonely animal in the form of the Spotted Pink Skunk. Forget white and black, as this one is black and pink (and quite cute too, I must say). Luckily, at least one of these Skunks will be available to all users absolutely free, so long as they put forth a little effort to complete this lonely animal event.

As you might have guessed, to lure this Spotted Pink Skunk into your farm, you'll need to ask five individual friends to come and help you coax the little fella in. You can purchase this help with Farm Cash if you'd rather not bug your neighbors, but either way, you'll need to make your decision within three days, as the Skunk won't be around forever.

It's exciting to see the lonely animal feature updated with new or otherwise interesting animals, rather than the same copy-and-pastes of weeks and months past. Hopefully, this is a trend that continues into the future, and you can be sure we'll let you know if that's the case!