Tuesday, April 12, 2011

the tale of two chicks

There are a great many side-effects involved in being a veterinarian's daughter.  Most of them lead to tragicomedy.  From birth I've been privy to snippet's of my dad's conversations with others about responsible animal care, and occasionally been a listener when he needed to rant about people who really shouldn't have pets.  Not to mention the stream of foster-pets throughout my childhood.  All of this led to me thinking I know more than I do about the ethics of animal stewardship.

I'm full of hot air, folks.

In one instance this led me to attempt to rescue a skunk that had been hit by a car.  Luckily I failed.  But the story has been told and retold so many times that when my little sister brought it up the other day it had evolved into multiple instances, multiple skunks, and a desecrated car trunk.  Heaven help us all.

Most recently I opened my mouth to make sure Nicole Gerulat had a good home in mind for the chicks she had purchased for this shoot:


AND, when she did not, I had to take it upon myself to find them one.  A good one - with someone who actually knows how to keep chicks alive and is committed to the long-term baggage that comes with taking care of them.  Luckily I know some people.  Less luckily, they were out of town until yesterday.  So we found ourselves (um, meaning myself) with some chicks to take care of for almost a week.  

(Because, you know, I need more small dependent beings relying on me for all the basic elements of their survival.  {We're up to 37 sprouts and 3 small boys if anyone was counting}  All this right before the weekend of my first wedding.  Clearly I am insane people.)  

Luckily the chicks did fine.  They ate a lot, pooped a lot, and made a lot of noise.  They also decided that their feathers needed to come in, pronto.  Molting?  Awesome.  They now look like this:

how d'ya like my new look?  - adieu chicks

And are happily situated with their new mom:

chick's new mom

And in a few months they will be hanging out with these ladies:

new roomies

Sir O was pretty bummed about losing them.  Luckily they live just down the road and we can visit whenever we want.  There will even be lambs to visit in May.  Consolation?  He was allowed to gather the chicken eggs, and now thinks he wants to live on a farm permanently.

Sir O gathering eggs

2 comments:

la_sale_bete said...

I love these chicks!
I wish I could have chickens, but there's not much room in NYC.

K-Krew said...

Love the chicks! Reminds me of the ones we had for a couple of weeks last spring. They molted and tried to fly the coop. Good times.

Good luck with your wedding weekend!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...