"My" Baby Chicken

On Sunday night, after we launched the rocket, Pops, Andrew and I were down at the barn dropping off the LRV. I noticed an odd, disgusting smell in the barn as well as an orangey glow coming from one of the former horse stalls.

"Um, what is that over there?" I asked Andrew.

He sort of grinned at me and said, "It's chickens!"

Oh no. Chickens. I hate chickens. I flatly refused to have any part of them when I was in high school, which I am surprised that I got away with.

I ventured over to look into the stall and was pleasantly surprised to notice that these chickens were just little itty bitty babies, still all yellow and downy.

(It's the nasty teenager-type pullets that I don't care for because they're so gawky and ugly. And smelly.)

Andrew and Dad got out Dad's remote controlled airplane and hooked it up the the LRV engine to try to get it started. That didn't go so well (it was too high off the ground), so Dad brought out another one of his contraptions, and gave it a whirl. Literally.

Honestly, I didn't know that he still had that old riding lawnmower, but it's a good thing he did because it was just the right height to get the airplane started.

All the exhaust the airplane was putting out was making Andrew and I blow smoke rings (seriously, it was) and that really creeped me out. So I went into the chicken stall and made funny vocal-soaring noises at them and watched their little heads go up, down and jiggle around from side to side.

I selected a particularly cute chicken and tried to catch it.

No luck.

So then I just grabbed the next one I could get my hands on; fortunately he was pretty cute too. He tried to peck me, but since his beak was still rubbery and soft it didn't hurt.

I took him outside to watch dad's plane taxi up and down the driveway, and occasionally off into the pine trees.

Sister, Joey, Laura and Stephen were up by the house, so I took Chicken up to the house to be admired by them. Sister told me that Chicken might die, since he had been handled by so many people, so I took him back down to the barn. I'd hate to be the cause of an unpleasant dinner for Pops, him having just found Chicken dead in the barn. (He likes to keep the death toll as low as possible.)

On the way, Chicken and I happened upon the stray, whiney kitten, meowing his poor heart out in the pine tree that Dad had nearly crashed his plane into earlier. I stuck Chicken down as close to the kitty as I could get (which wasn't all that close) and the kitty ran back into the tree.

I figured I'd better put Chicken back before something bad happened to him, so I took him back into the stall and deposited him back with all of his other brothers. He quickly disappeared into the mass of yellow fluff.

I think I was supposed to feed them, but I didn't really know how. And twice I forgot to tell Dad that I never fed them...Joey even kept reminding me. It's a little late now to fess up to forgetting to feed the chickens on Sunday night, eh?

Dad, if you're reading this, I forgot to feed the chickens on Sunday night. That, and I didn't really know what to give them for food or water, so I'd probably have poisoned them if I had fed them anyway. Sorry. I hope they didn't die.

Better late than never!