The chicken saga

If you were to visit my house right now, you’d probably notice the big cardboard box of chicks sitting in the living room.

To be honest, it’s hard to miss. A 2′x5′x2′ box, glowing red from the heat lamp suspended above it, from which loud peeping and chirping can be heard, is not the sort of thing one easily misses.

These are the kinds of things that happen when you have a kid.

You see, we have a 6-year old boy. I’ve referred to him many times here as “Bunker Monkey”. Bunker Monkey LOVES animals. Big animals, little animals, gentle animals, animals that would rip off your face if you got within 20 feet of them (“Hi Mr. Bear! Wanna hug?”). It doesn’t matter – if he thinks they’re cute (and believe-you-me, some of what he considers “cute” would make you wonder if the kid needs an eye exam), then he loves them. Wants to cuddle them. Wants to bring them home and live with them and HUG THEM AND LOVE THEM AND CALL THEM GEORGE.*

Of course, baby chickens fall well within that want-to-cuddle category. And being that we live in the country, Bunker Monkey has plenty of access to baby chickens – at the farms we visit, at the local Tractor Supply store, hell, we’ve got two neighbors with chickens just down the block.

So when we saw the baby chicks arrive at the Tractor Supply, Bunker Monkey asked – yet again  – if he could get chickens. Unbeknownst to him, we had decided already that he could get chickens.

When we told him “yes”, his head almost exploded.

That evening, we went to the Tractor Supply and picked up 12 chickens, a heat lamp, a watering container, some feed, and their bedding. The chicks were tiny – small enough to fit in the palm of my hand – and went into the boy’s bathtub with some bedding, food, and water. The heat lamp was set up so they could sit under it and warm themselves up, or move to a different part of the tub if they were too warm.

And thus began the refrain of “Leave those chicks alone!”

Every five minutes, it seemed, the boy was in the bathroom trying to pick the chicks up, or pet them, or chase them around the bathroom. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t frighten one of the poor things to death, but I suppose chickens are tougher than we thought.

They’re bigger now, the chickens – it takes two hands to hold them, and they’re able to fly out of the tub, so it’s time to put them in the coop. Which we don’t have yet (what, you thought we were organized?), so instead we’ve put them in the cardboard box that Bunker Hubby’s big plotter came in. The box is too big to put in the bathroom, so they’re in the livingroom for the time being. The glow from their heatlamp is visible from our bedroom, which adds a whole “honeymoon suite in Hades” feel to the sleeping experience (um, fun!).

I only hope “the time being” doesn’t turn into “until they get big enough to start laying eggs”. That could be….a challenge.