More Cute Chicks

We're still all about the chicks over here.

One chick has been a little sick.
She has, well there's only one way to say it, at least if I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about in the chicken blogging world. She has pasty butt. Leave it to chicken farmers to say it like it is. I don't know if she ate a pine chip or if I fed her something weird too early, or if she is just a weak-stomach type, but she has trouble passing her shit. We've given her a few baths, we've cleaned her up, and most of all, we've discussed her passing events in great detail, as a family. What can I say, it's been a bonding event.

We think she's going to make it, but she's already smaller than the other ones. Aww. The one good thing: we can identify her! She is Ginger! She looks different from the other three Brahma chicks, whom I've begun to think of as the Budweiser triplets. Remember them? Blond, buxom, fit, gorgeous, fluffy-- and identical. And, maybe not that smart. That's my three girls in a nutshell: Dot, Monkey and Sunset.


And then...

...There's Scrambles, who should have a theme song of her own by now.

This picture of Scrambles is like when you take a picture of some funny or cool or large than life person, and the picture looks so...eh. Is his nose really that big? Is she really that short? Scrambles looks so squat and humble in all her pictures, but meanwhile she is the star of the roost. She is so friendly and fearless and funny. She runs over to us when we appear in their window. She likes to be picked up. And she rolls. She's a roller. She likes to lie down, and then she just flops over and rolls on her side, and stretches out her wings.

Is it starting to seem like even if one of our chicks is a rooster the chances of us slaughtering the poor guy and eating him is a total impossibliity? Or that (my real plan) once the chickens stop laying eggs we'll slaughter them all and start over again? Uh, yeah. At this point we're not even sure if we can keep eating anonymous chickens. It just seems a little weird, that's all. Is it because the chicks are in a brooder right off our kitchen, where we eat? Is it because they are so cute and we are really identifying with them? Or because when I hold them I can identify their bone structure with my fingers and know what it feels to like to crunch through certain parts, or to use the tip of my knife to cut through the joint?

No, I think it all harks back to the dinner in which my daughter speared a chicken thigh on her fork, ran over to the brooder, and then danced around the cage, chanting "Bok bok bok bok!" to the chicks, while waving the chicken thigh in front of their faces. Their bobbing heads, following the chicken thigh and responding to her Lynchian call to complicity, or possibly ecstasy, was a bit much for me. I can do without eating chicken for a while.

But I'm loving the whole process.

Here's a picture of one of the triplets who fell asleep on my daughter's lap.