Another New Chick in Days of My Destiny

In-laws are here at the moment. Enjoying that as much as I can. Making sure I don't fall into the resentful negative talk I usually fall into by day 3. It started this morning and was able to breathe deeply and stop thinking about Myself First. Little steps to manage the snowball effect that the little things can have on me when they are here.

It's my husband's 32nd birthday tomorrow. I can't believe he will be 32. I'm so in love with him. He's just SUCH a gentle soul, I have been amazingly blessed with such a man, AND his parents. Seriously.

Brief update on the chick situation: the day after the whole Bitek and Cole story, I went in to feed the hens and their babies and found a new, dead chick in the pen, its head completely stripped of any fur. It even had an eye missing. Clearly this poor little thing was pecked until it couldn't move or peep anymore. It was revolting to look at but also really really sad. I couldn't believe the atrocity. I picked it up to bury it and realised..... it was still breathing. It was looking at me with its one eye, unable to blink because they'd pecked away its eyelid. It was moving its beak ever so slowly, as if trying to say something, but there was no sound. I couldn't bury it alive, neither could I kill it, so I called L outside and asked him to peg it into one of the surrounding paddocks. I then removed any remaining eggs from the chook pen, which were 4 in total, and put them under a lamp with Bitek and Cole. I was NOT going to witness this again.

We soon got on with our day, preparing for L's parents' arrival. They got here in the early afternoon and we relaxed and talked and so on. A few hours later, at around 4pm, L was hanging out in the shed with his dad and I was in the house somewhere. I heard L approaching the house, calling me with a slight sense of urgency in his voice. "Come and see this bub!" He walked into the house, looking for me - with the little stripped-headed chick in his hand, ALIVE AND CHIRPING LOUDLY. Again, it was disgusting to look at, and we were absolutely shocked at how on earth it had survived a whole day in the sun with its head stripped like that and no water. But it was well and truly alive and it wasn't going anywhere near death it seemed. Its blood had dried right up, so that now it was a fluffy little chick with a bald, black head, and one eye. The eye had grown a very thin layer of skin (?) over it, obviously to protect the eye, in the time between throwing the chick away and finding it again. Basically L said he was outside when he suddenly heard loud cheep cheep cheeping and when he realised it was coming from the direction he'd thrown the chick in, he slowly walked towards it - and there it was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We put him in with Bitek and Cole and they were perplexed by this furry monster. They pecked it a little and then left it right alone. I decided we should call it Pirate, since it only had one eye lol. 24 hours later, it was still alive and kicking and I cleaned its dry blood off its head. It really really loved affection and kept trying to rub his bald head on my hand, as if trying to snuggle under his own mumma. The bald head felt GROSS on my hand so I had trouble allowing it to do that. I cleaned its wounds with a cotton tip and it LOVVVED that, lapped it right up and fell asleep!!! A few hours later, it started losing its balance and I held it to look at it and its head rolled right back and touched its own back. It was pretty scary and yuck and then it just kind of spasmed and I put it back near Bitek and Cole, to die near family. It died a short time later. It was sad, but I was glad that Pirate was determined NOT to die until it had felt some love in its short little life.

So goodbye, Pirate.

L threw it back over the paddock and the mood in the house was a little sombre, until a few hours later, when we realised that one of the 4 remaining eggs had a tiny little crack in it. We only realised because Bitek and Cole were chirping really loudly, making such a fuss, and when I went to check on them, they were running around excitedly, lol. Nature is just SO SO SO SO cute. They knew what was going on, and then I could hear a very faint cheep cheep coming from INSIDE THE EGG! I had read just hours earlier that chicks do this when they're ready to hatch, they start communicating with the outside world!!!!!! I'd also read that it takes anywhere between a few hours and 24 hours for an egg to hatch so I knew not to get too carried away.

The next morning I checked on it and it hadn't progressed at all. I didn't worry though, I'd read online that one should wait around the 24 hours before stepping in to help it hatch (there's a VERY specific way to do this and I'd read about that too). Anyhow I left it and went to collect M from her best friend's house. She'd had her FIRST. EVER. SLEEPOVER and it was time to pick her up! [This needs to be a whole other entry on its own, by the way.] When we came back, the first thing I did was go and check on the hatching egg. Sure enough, the chick had cracked the egg around it (they actually peck at the inside of the egg, then while still inside, spin around so that they peck around the circumference of one end of the egg - then they eventually have one big stretch, and that cracks the egg, and they fall out, all wet and curled up - just like a newborn human!). We stood there and watched it wriggle around and then rest, then wriggle some more, then rest some more. It would cheep cheep and squirm for about 30 seconds, then rest for 1 minute. It really was a labour all on its own! It was AMAZING to be able to stand there and watch this little life enter the world in this way. Bitek and Cole were extremely excited, again, running around all over the cage in no exact or orderly direction, and they kept coming back to the hatching egg, looking at it and pecking at the eggshell. Finally, the little hatchling had stretched enough that its wing was sticking out of the egg. It was REALLY cute - its face was under its wing, so that it seemed to be playing peek-a-boo with the world each time it lifted its wing lol. We'd see its little eye under its wing. I kept talking to it, telling it YOU CAN DO IT, come on out! (I read that it's good to talk to a hatchling as its hatching, because it recognises your voice - just like human babies from within the womb.......). Finally, Bitek couldn't contain him/herself anymore and just pecked at the wing, grabbing it and pulling it, so that the top half of this new chick was pulled out of the egg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So then the chick was stuck in the bottom half of the egg, cheeping and chirping loudly, but the others had left it alone by then. We watched it struggle for ages and in the end, we gave it a hand to finish the hatching process, by turning the bottom half of the egg onto its side so that this little chick could come out. I decided to call this chick Hope because after the horrible ordeal that Pirate went through, and after its short depressing life, this little chick has come into the world, giving us hope that there IS joy in having little animals, no matter what the mothers do to them.