I just realized I had not written about the chickies at all: on my mom’s last day here we saw kids at Lydgate park carrying aroung the tiniest of chicks. I was kind of concerned, and followed them around. It was late and the chickens started to disapear into trees and other places, safe for the night. When the kids were finished playing with the chicks around sunset I looked for the hen – of course could not find it. We decided to take them home overnight and look for the hen the next morning.
For 2 hours we stalked every hen that had small chicks. One had exactly the same size and coloring, but from a tourist who had watched them since they had hatched we knew they were all accounted for. We still tried to sneak them in… the hen seemed to accept the light colored ones but pecked away the dark one. Racism in chickens. I was concerned about having one chicken. I mean – if there are 3 I thought it would be easy to feed them, and they’d keep each other company, wouldn’t get tame… but one – is lonesome and bonds to people. Not good.
We looked a little longer to find someone to adopt the brown chick, then went back to where the hen was that we thought had taken the other 2 in. 100 feet away the 2 tiny chicks were waddeling up to me. We put them back in the box and drove home. We didn’t name them, didn’t pet them, and kept Leilani from liking them too much. They grew fast, and Wednesday morning we set them free.
We went back to check on them Wednesday afternoon but couldn’t find them, except maybe one. Today we went looking for them again and found them right where we had released them. I was never so happy to see three small chickens. They were staying together and ran away from me when I tried to feed them, and it’s better that way. Andy says: assuming they are all hens, I named them Faith, Hope, and Charity because we raised them, set them free, and found them again.
