I heard a lot of giggling from the bathroom that evening. The bathroom with the chicks in the "Jacuzzi" chick brooder. Suddenly JianXia bursts into my office wanting the camera, immediately! When I told her I wasn't sure where it was, but where to look, she gasped, "it won't last that long, give me your camera phone!"
I went on with my work, more giggling from the bathroom ensued, and then Dad was home, dinner to be put on the table and I forgot about my phone. This morning I took a look at what the two of them had been doing with the chicks.
We have two older chicks (5 weeks old) that also live in the broody bathroom. Their names are "Gimpy" (who sustained a femoral fracture at 4 days of age and has healed wonderfully thanks to having his own, personal, live-in veterinarian who knew how to splint/cast a baby chick's broken bones) who has turned out to be a, gasp, rooster, and Audry, a pullet, which is chicken talk for a female chicken who has not yet started laying eggs. Then you call them hens. With me so far?
Anyway, the kids have had the most time to spend with Gimpy and Audry, and have taught them a number of "chicken tricks". (DISCLAIMER: no chickens were harmed in the training of these birds.) It turns out that the burgeoning chicken trainers were just getting warmed up for the next level of chicken trick competition! While not in the actual photographs that document this momentous occasion, JianXia, however, had just as big a part as the child who is performing with the chickens. JianXia gets the cell-phone photo credits.
First, you take 2 tame, half-grown chickens, 1 baggie and 1 brother. Carefully place the baggie (at your chicken-poop phobic brother's insistence) on your brother's head. Next, place the largest of the chicks upon the baggie, instructing him to "cling!" to the hair with his toes so as not to slip off during this daring stunt.
Finally, (drum roll please), you carefully place the smaller chicken upon the larger chicken's back, ever so slowly with the soft but firm command to "stay!". Then you run to get a camera while brother admires himself and his fellow performance artists, lit by the red brooder heat lamps, in the large bathroom mirrors.
And the crowd ROARS!
I went on with my work, more giggling from the bathroom ensued, and then Dad was home, dinner to be put on the table and I forgot about my phone. This morning I took a look at what the two of them had been doing with the chicks.
We have two older chicks (5 weeks old) that also live in the broody bathroom. Their names are "Gimpy" (who sustained a femoral fracture at 4 days of age and has healed wonderfully thanks to having his own, personal, live-in veterinarian who knew how to splint/cast a baby chick's broken bones) who has turned out to be a, gasp, rooster, and Audry, a pullet, which is chicken talk for a female chicken who has not yet started laying eggs. Then you call them hens. With me so far?
Anyway, the kids have had the most time to spend with Gimpy and Audry, and have taught them a number of "chicken tricks". (DISCLAIMER: no chickens were harmed in the training of these birds.) It turns out that the burgeoning chicken trainers were just getting warmed up for the next level of chicken trick competition! While not in the actual photographs that document this momentous occasion, JianXia, however, had just as big a part as the child who is performing with the chickens. JianXia gets the cell-phone photo credits.
First, you take 2 tame, half-grown chickens, 1 baggie and 1 brother. Carefully place the baggie (at your chicken-poop phobic brother's insistence) on your brother's head. Next, place the largest of the chicks upon the baggie, instructing him to "cling!" to the hair with his toes so as not to slip off during this daring stunt.
Finally, (drum roll please), you carefully place the smaller chicken upon the larger chicken's back, ever so slowly with the soft but firm command to "stay!". Then you run to get a camera while brother admires himself and his fellow performance artists, lit by the red brooder heat lamps, in the large bathroom mirrors.
And the crowd ROARS!
Last edited:
