CHICKS, REDUX
Back in the winter, Hillary tried to get me involved in the ordering of the new chicks. I resisted, even when he pulled out the catelog and offered me the opportunity to choose my favorites. I wasn't interested. After ten years of chickens, I'd had enough. They're cute when they arrive, but soon there is the reality of tending them 24/7 year round and finding caretakers for them when we want to go on vacation, not to mention the sorrow when - inevitably - we lose one to a predatator. I was ready to move on to a life beyond the chickens.
Not HIllary. Niight after night, he poured over the Murray McMurray Hatchery catelog, seduced by the variety of breeds. As always he was torn between selecting the proven egg producers like the Rhode Island Reds and the gorgeous plumage of the more exotic breeds like the rare Golden Campines, all black and gold, and the Egyptian Fayoumis and Silver Laced Wyandottes.
"What do you think?" he'd ask.
"I don't care," I'd answer. Though secretly drawn to the Buff Rocks and Campines, I offered no encouragement. Enough was enough.
But a Hen Man is a Hen Man through and through, and, even without enthusiasm on my part, he sent in his order.
The chicks arrived this morning. They're in the smaller hen house, huddled under the heat lamp and I am no longer able to remain unmoved by the miracle of life playing out before me. Earlier, I helped teach them how to drink by picking each one up out of a shipping container no larger than a shoe box and dunking its beak in the water trough. They are weighless as smoke in the palm, but already - one day old - filled with spunk. And even this early, a pecking order is developing. The bossy ones push the meeker aside to get to the water. One adventuresome one chased a bug across the floor. Their antics make me laugh out loud.
If you're in the neighborhood, stop by for a visit. In the midst of the trials and heartbreaks of our days when it seems as if every week comes news of another friend struck by cancer or other illness, not to mention the bleak national reports of war and a tanking economy, it is good to celebrate life in whatever form it comes to us.