April 13
The call came at 8 a.m. “We’ve got your rush delivery package here, ready for pickup.” I was out the door a minute later, trying not to speed on my way to the post office. When I arrived, the whole lobby was filled with the plaintive sound of peeping. Another woman stood in front of me, also breathless. “We’re here for our chicks?” she asked the man behind the counter, and he produced a small but extremely loud cardboard box from the back room. Aw, a pocket flock, I thought to myself, feeling a little self-congratulatory. Given the size of her package, I estimated she’d received no more than the shipping minimum of six, whereas I was expecting 16. The woman left, gingerly holding her pint-size package. I stepped up to the counter, suddenly nervous. “I’m here for my chicks,” I said, a little too loud.
“Oh, you’re the other one,” the clerk answered. The other one? All that noise was coming from just two boxes of birds? I gulped. He disappeared behind a partition and emerged a moment later, handing over a box, exactly the same size as the one he’d handed her. I shook my head. Maybe they were coming in two shipments? “Is that it?” I asked. “Yup,” he said. With a wry smile before he turned to his work, he added, “Good luck.” I picked up the box. It was no bigger than a happy meal. The book I’d read had told me to open it before accepting delivery, in case any chicks had died during transport. In my hands the box shook as the animals inside hurtled themselves against their cardboard confines. I imagined 16 baby chicks running rampant around my car if the box came open while I was driving. I decided it’d be best to follow that old advice: I would wait to count them.
I grew up with chickens. As a toddler, I learned my numbers counting the eggs I’d collected every morning. I could viscerally remember dipping my hand under the bird’s soft feathers to retrieve a body-warmed egg from the pine shavings. We hand-raised the birds in our living room, in a wooden box with an incandescent bulb that served as an incubator. The chickens were a rich part of my childhood imaginings. I wanted something similar for my own kids.
‘It’s OK, babies’
“You’ll lose some,” people warned me. For the hawks and coyotes and fishers and raccoons, backyard chickens are a deliciously welcome addition to Harvard’s food chain. That was why we got so many, thinking there would be some natural culling of the flock. At least, that was how I was thinking in February, when we ordered out of a catalog, when the chicks were merely theoretical. But now they were peeping and chirping from a box in the front seat of my car. I hadn’t even laid eyes on them and already my tough farmer’s resolve was shaking. “It’s OK, babies, we’re almost home,” I cooed to the box, not feeling the least bit silly.
We unwrapped our chicks at the kitchen table, counting them again and again to verify, yes, there really were 16 in that teeny tiny box. Some of them looked a little worse for wear. One in particular tottered on wobbly legs. When she opened her beak to peep, no sound came out. I wondered how long, really, the chicks had been in that box. I took them one by one and dipped their beaks into the trough, as the book instructed, showing them how to get water. The weak one lay limp in my hand, breathing hard. I dipped her beak again and again, watching her throat as she swallowed. Eventually she perked up and started to eat. I felt like Florence Nightingale.
To be continued …
