Once Upon a Flock

by Lauren Scheuer

  Lucy’s wonderful chant, it turned out, was not a Zen mantra. It was a communication with her unborn chick. So Lucy had been building their bond from the start. I wondered if the chick had been listening to Hatsy and me and was bonding with us as well. And if I set up a stereo and piped in a bit of Mozart, would it boost our chick’s IQ?

  When I read that the baby starts peeping inside the shell a couple of days before hatching, I rushed out into the night to hear for myself. I reached under Lucy, found the warm egg, and put it to my ear.

  Nothing.

  The next night I read that if you tap on the shell, it will tap back. So out I went again, to sit in the dark under an umbrella in the rain with an egg to my ear.

  I tapped.

  I heard it—a little tap-tapping inside.

  I tapped again. Chick tapped again.

  Morse code?

  It gave me shivers. I put Lucy’s egg back and pranced home smiling.

  Bright and early the next morning:

  Pip!

  Chicken folk call that first little hole a pip, which is not to be confused with a zip.

  The pip is usually in the center of the shell, halfway between the ends, where the shell is thinnest. Pipping occurs when the chick’s lungs begin to function. There is a small pocket of air inside the egg, but once that oxygen is used up, the chick begins to asphyxiate. Its neck muscles convulse and it flings the head forward, and … pip! An air hole, thank goodness, is created.

  Once that breathing hole is established, the chick has an air supply. The chick then relaxes for a few hours or even for a whole day.

  But I never did read the part about the chick relaxing. I read only as far as the pip. So after the pip, I assumed that Lucy’s egg would very soon crack in two, and out would jump our fluffy new chick. I left Lucy with her pipped egg and returned twenty minutes later. Nothing. Twenty minutes after that: nothing. All morning long I pestered Lucy. She was calm, I grew more and more anxious, and the pip remained just a pip.

  I would be teaching an art class in my studio that afternoon and my students were due to arrive soon, but I didn’t want to miss the blessed event for which I’d waited twenty-one days. To stay out of Lucy’s hair, I went inside and cleaned up the studio a bit and made preparations for class. Then I hurried back out to check on the egg one last time.

  I carefully opened the nest box door,

  and the egg flew out.

  It fell two feet onto the hard bare ground and cracked.

  Inside the egg, our baby screamed.

  I picked it up and cupped my hands around the cracked shell. I broke into a sweat. Why had the egg been alone in the corner? Why had Lucy kicked it out of the nest? Was that normal? Had she been confused by the sounds inside the egg? Had my incessant annoying vigilance caused this?

  I looked closely at the egg. The shell was smashed on one side. I saw a bit of blood and some wet feathers.

  Then I heard laughter and looked up to see four art students marching toward me across the sunny lawn. I had to act fast.

  Lucy was agitated, I was shaking, the egg was screaming. I placed it back in the middle of the nest, shut the door, wiped my brow, and rushed to my students.

  “Did the egg hatch yet?”

  “Nope, not yet—let’s go do art!” I tried not to faint as I herded them away from the coop and into the house.

  15

  Egg Emergency

  That was maybe the longest two-hour art class I ever taught. There was one small part of my consciousness that inspired and entertained four young artists, while all the rest of me squirmed at the thought of our little chick, maybe alive, maybe dead, maybe still screaming in its shell.

  When class finally ended, I rushed the children out the door and into waiting cars. I waved and smiled as the last of them disappeared down the road, and then I turned toward Lucy’s coop. I listened carefully as I walked toward it, but I heard no sounds.

  This time I opened the nest box door oh so carefully and held my hand beneath it to catch any projectile.

  Lucy was on the nest. She looked at me as she always did. Placid and content.

  I slowly slipped my hand under her breast and helped her to stand. We both looked.

  No egg.

  No chick.

  No sound.

  I peered behind her and in the corners. I looked all around the coop. Nothing.

  I slid my hand through the bedding and the hay but couldn’t find a hint of anything—no shell, no feather, no blood. Then, while sifting around in the left corner, I felt the egg.

  It was cold.

  I lifted it out. Pine shavings were stuck to the side that was smashed. I delicately plucked them off. Looking closely, I could see a bit of brown gooey chick inside.

  I cupped my hand around the cold shell and blew warm coffee breath on it. There was a tiny movement inside the shell. I shut the door on Lucy, who had sat down and resumed her brooding as if nothing had ever happened.

  If this baby had any chance to live, I was going to have to take over for Lucy. Still breathing on the shell, I stood up and hurried toward the house.

  But now what? Mother Nature had designed Lucy to be the perfect incubator. Okay. The two things the egg needed most were heat and humidity.

  Sarah helped me set up our emergency room in the studio with a box, a towel, a squirt bottle of water, and my desk lamp.

  It was the best we could do in a pinch. With the squirt bottle, I dampened a paper towel and placed it over the egg to keep the desk lamp from cooking our baby. Sarah and I looked at each other. We peeked under the paper towel at the egg. Nothing was happening. She asked me if we might peel some of the shell away in order to help it hatch. I recalled reading somewhere that it is very important to allow the chick to hatch on its own, so we decided it would be best to wait and watch.

  So we waited and watched. But the chick wasn’t doing much of anything. Sarah eventually left the studio. I sat down. An hour passed and the chick seemed slightly more active. Another hour passed and I realized this was going to be a long process. I took a break and came back with a tall glass of chardonnay and a big bowl of potato salad.

  Another hour passed.

  Whenever I saw some movement, I lifted the paper towel. I glimpsed parts of a chick inside the membrane, but there were really no recognizable body parts. I couldn’t even guess how this creature was folded so compactly inside its package.

  At last I recognized the egg tooth: a pointy protrusion on the top of the beak that is used solely for hatching purposes and then falls off a day or two later.

  Another eon elapsed.

  Eventually a foot emerged … and another. They were enormous.

  Sarah and Danny stopped in to check on us every hour or so. Marky came in and lay down on the floor beside me. Our chick struggled, napped, struggled some more, and finally broke out.

  With one last kick, it was free of the shell.

  Then naptime again.

  It was a redhead. The wet fluff looked like hair. The baby looked more like E.T. than a chick. I supposed it needed time to unfurl, like a new butterfly’s wings when it emerges from the chrysalis.

  All of its parts were present and accounted for. Wings, feet, even a comb. The disastrous fall from the coop that morning hadn’t caused any evident damage.

  Now what?

  Well, I supposed that if the chick had hatched beneath the mother hen, it would get a nice buffing from her feathers and it would fluff right up. So I buffed with a tissue.

  And I buffed some more.

  There.

  What a triumph. What a beautiful prize. I felt so happy for Lucy that she had been successful in her brooding.

  Well, successful until this last day.

  I sandwiched our new treasure carefully between my warm hands and took it downstairs to meet Danny and Sarah, but I allowed them only a moment of adoration before hugging the chick to my chest and scooting it out the door. This chick was Lucy’s, not ours. I hoped that Lucy would
welcome it back. I carried it through the darkness to its home.

  “Budup?” Lucy asked as I opened her door.

  “Budup,” she said again.

  The instant the chick heard her voice it peeped frantically, hopped to its feet, and tottered off my hand onto the nest. Lucy’s chant quickened. She lifted herself as high as she could and looked down as the chick dived into the warmth of her fluff. I closed her door and waited a moment, listening as hen and chick shifted around and settled in.

  The budups continued, the peeping continued.

  The peeps got louder.

  The peeping sounded hysterical.

  The budups seemed desperate.

  I opened the door and lifted Lucy to see what was wrong. Lucy’s baby had cuddled into the crook of her knee. As Lucy folded her leg to sit, she was actually choking the wee thing. I lifted Lucy high enough for the gagging chick to free itself. It floundered away from her leg and crawled to a safer location beneath Lucy’s hulking body.

  Shortly after birth, a lesson learned: the struggle to survive never ends, even while nestled at the bosom of a loving mother.

  I closed the door again.

  The baby’s muffled peeping quieted down and then ceased altogether, while Lucy’s soft chant continued.

  “Good night, Lucy,” I whispered, and walked away.

  16

  Lucy Gets to Work

  The next morning, the chick popped right out from under Lucy and tottered to the doorway to look at me.

  I was overjoyed to find that Chickie had survived the night in the care of her less-than-graceful mother. She had fluffed up very nicely, too. I decided right there that the chick was a she because it’s always best to have a positive outlook. Of course, only time would tell.

  Chickie was active and bright eyed, and she turned her attention immediately from me to her mother. Lucy had managed to get to her feet without my help. She was poking around the nest, appearing to be busy and talking nonstop. She said all sorts of chicken words I had never heard before, and the chick listened attentively and responded promptly. Everywhere Lucy turned, her chick was right beside her, skittering to and fro to avoid being crushed by Lucy’s gargantuan feet, all the while watching her mother’s face and her movements. I placed a small cup of chick food in the nest box. Lucy pecked around in it, and when she found the one morsel that suited her, she changed her words to a higher-pitched tut-tut-tut-tut.

  Chickie rushed to the dish and picked at the tidbit that Lucy held in her beak. That tut-tut-tut is called “tidbitting,” and it is used to announce and offer food. This was new to me, but Chickie apparently understood from the start.

  I had brought Lucy a special treat, too—a big slice of tomato. I placed it on the balcony beside the nest box and she came right out to enjoy it there. After eating a few bites herself, she announced the food with a “tut-tut-tut,” and Chickie staggered eagerly to the threshold. Lucy continued her call, and Chickie lurched forward, overshot the tomato, and tumbled off the ledge into a pile of dry leaves below.

  Lucy clucked hysterically to her missing chick. I opened the lower door and fished the chirping chick out of the leaves. Once Chickie was back by her side, Lucy calmed down and they finished the tomato together. Then Lucy returned to the nest box and sat herself down, and her baby dived in beneath her. Under Lucy, Chickie was safe, more or less, for the moment. But this coop was not a safe place to raise a chick. It was fraught with chickie perils. The water cups were drowning hazards, the ramp would be a challenge, and if the little nugget did any more catapulting off the ledge, she was bound to get hurt. Since I couldn’t think of any way to make Lucy’s coop chickproof, I was going to have to build something new.

  I visited my ever-growing scrap pile in the garage and sifted through leftover lumber and fencing. Then I sketched some ideas and made a plan.

  Simple.

  It was a cage made of (ouch) hardware cloth. It was about four feet square.

  Flaps on the bottom made it darn near impossible for a predator to squeeze in under the wire. A few bricks and rocks on top of those flaps ensured a very secure cage for hen and chick. And since it was so portable, I would be able to drag the cage to fresh clean grass and to sunshine or shade anytime a change was necessary.

  A storage bin inside the cage would serve as the broody house, a cozy place with no ramps, ledges, or sharp protrusions.

  Within a couple of hours, hen and chick were in their new home. Lucy, always appreciative of my attention to detail, looked it over and expressed her approval by planting herself inside the upturned bin and rearranging bits of fresh bedding around her. From where she sat she could keep an eye on her little one, and from the look of exhaustion on her face, I could tell she welcomed the chance to sit down. She summoned Chickie with a clear and unarguable cluck. Chickie obeyed by diving under Lucy for a nap.

  I couldn’t find the old waterer I had used when Lucy and the ladies were little, so I improvised.

  And when a light drizzle began to fall, I improvised again with a sheet of plastic.

  This setup would do just fine for a few weeks until Chickie grew and toughened up a bit. Then hen and chick could move back into the special-needs coop.

  Chickie was such a delicate thing that at first I had a hard time leaving her outside in all sorts of weather and darkness and dangers,

  with only Lucy to care for her.

  But Lucy proved to be a confident and competent mother, and she gave her chick everything she needed.

  Once everything was secure, I let Marky out to investigate the broody coop and its contents. He trotted past the new cage but did a double take when he spied the chick inside. At the first glimpse of Chickie, he regressed into the twitching drooling uncontrollable mess that he had been when the girls were tiny.

  So when Lucy and Chickie went out to explore the world,

  Marky was kept at bay.

  I knew Lil’White wouldn’t take kindly to Lucy’s chick either, so I blocked her exit while I let Hatsy out of the coop. Hatsy flapped joyfully across the yard to join Lucy in the garden. I followed right behind, eager to see her reaction when she first laid eyes on our beloved chick.

  Hatsy pecked around beside Lucy for a moment before she spotted the chick behind a tuft of forget-me-nots. There was no love in her eyes when she took a running dive at Chickie.

  Hatsy aimed to kill. Lucy lunged at Hatsy. Chickie squealed and plunged into Lucy’s fluff and Hatsy circled around and around the two.

  Boy, had I been mistaken. Apparently it was only the egg that Hatsy had so adored and not the chick within. I caught my little orange dynamo and hustled her back to the coop.

  By the time I returned to Lucy and Chickie, they had recovered from Hatsy’s attack and were back at work. Lucy was announcing all tasty findings with a tut-tut-tut-tut, and Chickie was scarfing them right down. Beetles, slugs, everything Lucy dug up, Chickie devoured. Everything except worms.

  Chickie hated worms. Lucy loved worms. Lucy offered worms over and over, but her tut-tut-tuts just didn’t work for worms. Chickie kept her beak shut tight until Lucy got the hint.

  Less than a day old, Chickie already had opinions.

  I had been wondering if I would notice any differences in behavior between Chickie, who had a mother hen to raise her, and the four chicks I had raised in my living room. One distinction stood out right away: Chickie had quite the attention span. While my four living room babies had been a willy-nilly bunch, stepping all over each other and bouncing about, this chick of Lucy’s had powerful focus—all eyes on mama, all the time.

  Chickie responded to Lucy’s every word and was ready at a moment’s notice to accept bits of food from her, or to scuttle underneath her if Lucy sounded the alarm.

  After a few days in the garden, Lucy led her little one on a greater tour of the yard.

  I wondered where she found this new strength and stamina, when during those weeks of brooding she had been barely able to walk. I chalked it up to determinati
on.

  Lucy jetted across the lawn with her little one. She was a hen on a mission.

  She taught Chickie the art of scratching and pecking. Chickie learned to stay close,

  but not too close.

  She taught Chickie to hunt for sorrel and dandelions, caterpillars and grubs, and to be respectful of bees, wasps, and ants.

  Sometimes Chickie had to learn things the hard way.

  As I followed hen and chick on their educational and nutritional forays, I observed another difference between Chickie and my original flock of living room chicks.

  My indoor chicks ate chick starter feed. It was their dietary staple. This feed was specially formulated to provide them with proper levels of necessary nutrients. By contrast, Chickie barely touched the stuff. The starter feed was always available to Chickie, but Lucy filled her little one so full of grubs and beetles and sweet clover and grass that the chick had no room in her belly for scientifically engineered nutrition.