This Summer's Babies

I realized I hadn't posted anything further about Dwayne's maternity ward!
By June 28th, ten chicks had hatched themselves out; sadly, one of the first to hatch couldn't use its legs so it had to be put down a week later. An eleventh chick was unable to make it out of its shell so it died in the incubator.
These things happen. Dwayne did admit he lay awake one night trying to figure out how to splint the little chick's wonky legs to see if it could be fixed but he's not gone so soft as to actually have attempted it.
So we have nine healthy chicks cheeping away in their cozy red light district of the chicken coop.
I don't know why babies make Abby so tense and intense. I can't tell if she wants to eat them or protect them -- but the choice is not something I want to find out.

The chicks are two weeks old now and growing just fine. You can already see the bars marking their Barred Rock breed in their tiny wings. My friend Shelagh, from Ontario, spent this past weekend here in rural Nova Scotia after her conference wrapped up in Halifax, and after discovering what a great alarm clock Andre Poulet is, she declined my offer to take one of the big chicks home with her -- just in case it turned out to be a feathered alarm clock.