Chick Update

Did I mention in an earlier blog that we got 6 chicks? Well, we got 5. Yeah, that's right. Actually, the Event of Which We Will Not Speak forced me to find out something interesting and slightly disturbing: chicks raised away from their mother hen are prone to get what is (I kid not) called "pasty butt": their excrement/urine combo clots onto their tiny bottoms, blocking the exit and preventing them from excreting--which means their intestines block up and they die a slow and horrible death. Prompted by the Event of Which We Will Not Speak, I self-trained to clean chick bottoms. (The secret is to hold them upside down under a running faucet stream of comfy warm water.) For the past four days I've been checking chick bottoms morning, noon and night and so for only two have needed such cleaning. Amazingly, chicks don't like having their bottoms cleaned by humans. Now when I appear, hovering over their little box, they are whipped into a frenzy of peeping, and tearing about. As I reach in, the peeping increases in pace and when I turn each over, it shrieks an explosive"PEEEEEEEEEEEP!" (No translation needed, I believe.) Today all bottoms were clean as a set of whistles. If they remain clean for the next week, we will be in the clear. Resentful chicks eyeing me suspiciously: