Relative Something

I had no idea how this would all play out, but every last moment thus far has been just plain “Wow!” Witnessing eggs hatch is nothing short of hypnotizingly mesmerizing, and I do mean both.

The first beauty surprised us both by emerging just a couple of hours after Cyndie’s early morning audit revealed 9 out of 17 eggs had visible “pips” in the shells. That first chick was getting pretty lonely by 2:30 in the afternoon, which is when I arrived to witness chick number two emerge.

.

.

It takes everything in our power to wrench ourselves away from the amazing nature show that causes time to evaporate but we did it a few times yesterday to eat some dinner, walk Delilah, feed the dog and cat, brush our teeth, and force ourselves to go to bed.

Every time we checked back, there were more chicks.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

One thing I didn’t expect was how synchronously they would behave with each other. Being well-familiar with days-old chicks from previous experience, we are used to seeing how they can instantaneously drop into nap mode. These hatchlings were putting in a Herculean effort of chipping out of the shell, which had them pausing for many naps.

After they are out of the shell, they continue to abruptly crash into instant sleep, and from what we saw, it is highly contagious. It is fascinating to watch. Suddenly all nine of the hatched chicks would lay down as if dead for maybe twenty seconds. When one pops up, all the others take the cue and a sort of cage match chaos resumes, right up until they all fall down again less than a minute later.

Put that on endless repeat, except that it never gets boring. Try falling asleep in your bed when you know there are eggshells being chipped open so that a prehistoric-dragon-looking baby chicken can see our world for the first time in the bathroom downstairs.

We noticed at least one chick with feathers on its feet, ala our Light Brahmas. There are others with hints of dark markings, but mostly, they all seem to have a coloring that reminds us of their dad, Rocky the rooster.

.

.