Then one day my mother cracked the case. And she might have cracked Champ's skull as well if my dad hadn't come to the rescue and shooed him outside.
Mom was fuming. “I told you it was him. The Mystery Smell comes from the Mystery
Pisser
! Did you see that? Did you
see
that? He just squirted on the end table!”
My father raced with a roll of paper towels to where Champ had been, and said, “Where? Where is it?”
All of three drops were dripping down the table leg. “There,” my mother said, pointing a shaky finger at the wetness. “There!”
Dad wiped it up, then checked the carpet and said, “It was barely a drop.”
“Exactly!” my mother said with her hands on her hips. “Which is why I've never been able to find anything. That dog stays outside from now on. Do you hear me? He is no longer allowed in this house!”
“How about the garage?” I asked. “Can he sleep in there?”
“And have him tag everything that's out there? No!”
Mike and Matt were grinning at each other. “Mystery Pisser! That could be the name for our band!”
“Yeah! Cool!”
“Band?” my mother asked. “Wait a minute, what band?” But they were already flying down to their room, laughing about the possibilities for a logo.
My father and I spent the rest of the day sniffing out and destroying criminal evidence. My dad used a spray bottle of ammonia; I followed up with Lysol. We did try to recruit my brothers, but they wound up getting into a spray-bottle fight, which got them locked in their room, which, of course, was fine with them.
So Champ became an outside dog, and he might have been our only pet ever if it hadn't been for my fifth-grade science fair.
Everyone around me had great project ideas, but I couldn't seem to come up with one. Then our teacher, Mrs. Brubeck, took me aside and told me about a friend of hers who had chickens, and how she could get me a fertilized egg for my project.
“But I don't know anything about hatching an egg,” I told her.
She smiled and put her arm around my shoulders. “You don't have to be an immediate expert at everything, Juli. The idea here is to learn something new.”
“But what if it dies?”
“Then it dies. Document your work scientifically and you'll still get an A, if that's what you're worried about.”
An A? Being responsible for the death of a baby chick—that's
what I was worried about. Suddenly there was real appeal in building a volcano or making my own neoprene or demonstrating the various scientific applications of gear ratios.
But the ball was in motion, and Mrs. Brubeck would have no more discussion about it. She pulled
The Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens
from her bookshelf and said, “Read the section on artificial incubation and set yourself up tonight. I'll get you an egg tomorrow.”
“But …”
“Don't worry so much, Juli,” she said. “We do this every year, and it's always one of the best projects at the fair.”
I said, “But…,” but she was gone. Off to put an end to some other student's battle with indecision.
That night I was more worried than ever. I'd read the chapter on incubation at least four times and was still confused about where to start. I didn't happen to have an old aquarium lying around! We didn't happen to have an incubation thermometer! Would a deep-fry model work?
I was supposed to control humidity, too, or horrible things would happen to the chick. Too dry and the chick couldn't peck out; too wet and it would die of mushy chick disease. Mushy chick disease?!
My mother, being the sensible person that she is, told me to tell Mrs. Brubeck that I simply wouldn't be hatching a chick. “Have you considered growing beans?” she asked me.
My father, however, understood that you can't refuse to do your teacher's assignment, and he promised to help. “An incubator's not difficult to build. We'll make one after dinner.”
How my father knows exactly where things are in our garage is one of the wonders of the universe. How he knew
about incubators, however, was revealed to me while he was drilling a one-inch hole in an old scrap of Plexiglas. “I raised a duck from an egg when I was in high school.” He grinned at me. “Science fair project.”
“A duck?”
“Yes, but the principle is the same for all poultry. Keep the temperature constant and the humidity right, turn the egg several times a day, and in a few weeks you'll have yourself a little peeper.”
He handed me a lightbulb and an extension cord with a socket attached. “Fasten this through the hole in the Plexiglas. I'll find some thermometers.”
“Some? We need more than one?”
“We have to make you a hygrometer.”
“A hy
grom
eter?” “To check the humidity inside the incubator. It's just a thermometer with wet gauze around the bulb.”
I smiled. “No mushy chick disease?”
He smiled back. “Precisely.”
By the next afternoon I had not one, but
six
chicken eggs incubating at a cozy 102 degrees Fahrenheit. “They don't all make it, Juli,” Mrs. Brubeck told me. “Hope for one. The record's three. The grade's in the documentation. Be a scientist. Good luck.” And with that, she was off.
Documentation? Of what? I had to turn the eggs three times a day and regulate the temperature and humidity, but aside from that what was there to do?
That night my father came out to the garage with a cardboard tube and a flashlight. He taped the two together so that the light beam was forced straight out the tube. “Let me show
you how to candle an egg,” he said, then switched off the garage light.
I'd seen a section on candling eggs in Mrs. Brubeck's book, but I hadn't really read it yet. “Why do they call it that?” I asked him. “And why do you do it?”
“People used candles to do this before they had incandescent lighting.” He held an egg up to the cardboard tube. “The light lets you see through the shell so you can watch the embryo develop. Then you can cull the weak ones, if necessary.”
“
Kill
them?”
“Cull them. Remove the ones that don't develop properly.”
“But … wouldn't that also kill them?”
He looked at me. “Leaving an egg you should cull might have disastrous results on the healthy ones.”
“Why? Wouldn't it just not hatch?”
He went back to lighting up the egg. “It might explode and contaminate the other eggs with bacteria.”
Explode! Between mushy chick disease, exploding eggs, and culling, this project was turning out to be the worst! Then my father said, “Look here, Julianna. You can see the embryo.” He held the flashlight and egg out so I could see.
I looked inside and he said, “See the dark spot there? In the middle? With all the veins leading to it?”
“The thing that looks like a bean?”
“That's it!”
Suddenly it felt real. This egg was
alive
. I quickly checked the rest of the group. There were little bean babies in all of them! Surely they had to live. Surely they would all make it!
“Dad? Can I take the incubator inside? It might get too cold out here at night, don't you think?”
“I was going to suggest the same thing. Why don't you prop open the door? I'll carry it for you.”
For the next two weeks I was completely consumed with the growing of chicks. I labeled the eggs A, B, C, D, E, and F, but before long they had names, too: Abby, Bonnie, Clyde, Dexter, Eunice, and Florence. Every day I weighed them, candled them, and turned them. I even thought it might be good for them to hear some clucking, so for a while I did that, too, but clucking is tiring! It was much easier to hum around my quiet little flock, so I did that, instead. Soon I was humming without even thinking about it, because when I was around my eggs, I was happy.
I read
The Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens
cover to cover twice. For my project I drew diagrams of the various stages of an embryo's development, I made a giant chicken poster, I graphed the daily fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and I made a line chart documenting the weight loss of each egg. On the outside eggs were boring, but I knew what was happening on the inside!
Then two days before the science fair I was candling Bonnie when I noticed something. I called my dad into my room and said, “Look, Dad! Look at this! Is that the heart beating?”
He studied it for a moment, then smiled and said, “Let me get your mother.”
So the three of us crowded around and watched Bonnie's heart beat, and even my mother had to admit that it was absolutely amazing.
Clyde was the first to pip. And of course he did it right before I had to leave for school. His little beak cracked
through, and while I held my breath and waited, he rested. And rested. Finally his beak poked through again, but almost right away, he rested again. How could I go to school and just leave him this way? What if he needed my help? Surely this was a valid reason to stay home, at least for a little while!
My father tried to assure me that hatching out could take all day and that there'd be plenty of action left after school, but I'd have none of that. Oh, no-no-no! I wanted to see Abby and Bonnie and Clyde and Dexter and Eunice and Florence come into the world. Every single one of them. “I can't miss the hatch!” I told him. “Not even a second of it!”
“So take it to school with you,” my mother said. “Mrs. Brubeck shouldn't mind. After all, this was
her
idea.”
Sometimes it pays to have a sensible mother. I'd just set up for the science fair early, that's what I'd do! I packed up my entire operation, posters, charts, and all, and got a ride to school from my mom.
Mrs. Brubeck didn't mind a bit. She was so busy helping kids with their projects that I got to spend nearly the entire day watching the hatch.
Clyde and Bonnie were the first ones out. It was disappointing at first because they just lay there all wet and matted, looking exhausted and ugly. But by the time Abby and Dexter broke out, Bonnie and Clyde were fluffing up, looking for action.
The last two took forever, but Mrs. Brubeck insisted that I leave them alone, and that worked out pretty great because they hatched out during the fair that night. My whole family came, and even though Matt and Mike only watched for about two minutes before they took off to look at some other
demonstration, my mom and dad stuck around for the whole thing. Mom even picked Bonnie up and nuzzled her.
That night after it was all over and I was packing up to go home, Mom asked, “So do these go back to Mrs. Brubeck now?”
“Do what go back to Mrs. Brubeck?” I asked her.
“The chicks, Juli. You're not planning to raise chickens, are you?”
To be honest, I hadn't thought beyond the hatch. My focus had been strictly on bringing them into the world. But she was right—here they were. Six fluffy little adorable chicks, each of which had a name and, I could already tell, its own unique personality.
“I…I don't know,” I stammered. “I'll ask Mrs. Brubeck.”
I tracked down Mrs. Brubeck, but I was praying that she didn't want me to give them back to her friend. After all, I'd hatched them. I'd named them. I'd saved them from mushy chick disease! These little peepers were mine!
To my relief and my mother's horror, Mrs. Brubeck said they were indeed mine. All mine. “Have fun,” she said, then zipped off to help Heidi dismantle her exhibit on Bernoulli's law.
Mom was quiet the whole way home, and I could tell—she wanted chickens like she wanted a tractor and a goat. “Please, Mom?” I whispered as we parked at the curb.
“Please?”
She covered her face. “Where are we going to raise chickens, Juli? Where?”
“In the backyard?” I didn't know what else to suggest.
“What about Champ?”
“They'll get along, Mom. I'll teach him. I promise.”
My dad said softly, “They're pretty self-sufficient, Trina.”
But then the boys piped up with, “Champ'll piss 'em to death, Mom,” and suddenly they were on a roll. “Yeah! But you won't even notice 'cause they're yellow already!” “Whoa! Yellow Already—cool name.” “That could work! But wait— people might think we mean our bellies!” “Oh, yeah—forget that!” “Yeah, just let him kill the chicks.”
My brothers looked at each other with enormous eyes and started up all over again. “Kill the Chicks! That's it! Get it?” “You mean like we're chick killers? Or like we
kill
the
chicks
?”
Dad turned around and said, “Out. Both of you, get out. Go find a name elsewhere.”
So they scrambled out, and the three of us sat in the car with only the gentle
peep-peep-peep
from my little flock breaking the silence. Finally my mother heaved a heavy sigh and said, “They don't cost much to keep, do they?”
My dad shook his head. “They eat bugs, Trina. And a little feed. They're very low-maintenance.”
“Bugs? Really? What sort of bugs?”
“Earwigs, worms, roly-polys … probably spiders, if they can catch them. I think they eat snails, too.”
“Seriously?” My mother smiled. “Well, in
that
case …”
“Oh, thank you, Mom. Thank you!”
And that's how we wound up with chickens. What none of us thought of was that six chickens scratching for bugs not only gets rid of bugs, it also tears up grass. Within six months there was nothing whatsoever left of our yard.
What we also didn't think of was that chicken feed attracts mice, and mice attract cats. Feral cats. Champ was pretty good at keeping the cats out of the yard, but they'd hang around the front yard or the side yard, just waiting for him to snooze so
they could sneak in and pounce on some tender little mousy vittles.
Then my brothers started trapping the mice, which I thought was just to help out. I didn't suspect a thing until the day I heard my mother screaming from the depths of their room. They were, it turns out, raising a boa constrictor.
Mom's foot came down in a big way, and I thought she was going to throw us out, lock, stock, and boa, but then I made the most amazing discovery—chickens lay eggs! Beautiful, shiny, creamy white eggs! I first found one under Bonnie, then Clyde—whom I immediately renamed Clydette—and one more in Florence's bed. Eggs!