E,
This week I’m thinking about eggs and urban farm
animals. Remember when I hatched chickens--in our study? Of course you do. Well,
it seemed like a good idea... The local extension agency
(bless them!) provides educators with incubators and eggs from one of those
mega chicken conglomerates, they which shall not be named (see any resemblance
to Lord Voldemort?).
There was me with fifteen eggs and an incubator
exuberantly ready to do what I had always wanted but never gotten to do. We
plugged it in and dutifully added water for 21 days. Every day I anxiously
checked the window. Were they turning alright? Would they have enough moisture?
Would any live or would I have to break it to my children and all their friends
that I was in fact a mass chicken killer? (Stop chuckling).
The first day of cracks I sat immovably for hours.
(I was equally transfixed only at the New Orleans aquarium watching a
father seahorse, belly heaving, wondering if I was about to witness birth).
Birth is a crazy, slow and exhausting process. Slowly a beak; an eye; a pulse
through a hole; a wing. Then, wonder of wonders, twelve little damp feathered
peeping (and pooping) hatchlings.
