Chicken and Egg - Janice Cole [7]
It’s so nice dealing with a small company. I had the feeling Clare was almost as excited as I was. “Now the fun part,” she said. “What color do you want?” “Blue!” I answered immediately, as I had my heart set on a royal blue coop. “Blue?” she said with genuine surprise.
My heart began to sink. What if they were out of blue coops? I couldn’t bear to have one of their other colors in my backyard, especially pink.
“Don’t you have any blue Eglus?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t worry, luv; we have blue. It’s just that people don’t normally order the blue.” My astonishment was apparent as I all but shouted “Really?” at her. “Well, we sell some blue coops, but the favorite is green. I guess because it blends into the grass.” Those silly sods! I thought to myself. Or maybe I said it out loud; I’m not sure. Brit-com slang had been filling my head while I was talking to her. That large plastic overgrown-outdated-iMac-computer-look-alike thing sitting in your garden is never going to blend in, no matter what color it is, I thought.
My belief, now restored, regarding the foolishness of other people increased my confidence as I confirmed that my choice was blue. I confided in Clare how I absolutely loved blue and how the coop would match the cushions on my deck furniture. I don’t think she cared that much. She did ask where we were going to put the Eglu, and I said in our backyard. Actually, I might have said “in our garden” with my best British accent because I was really getting into it by that time. We finished the transaction, and she reminded me the coop and run would be delivered in two parts, along with the grub bowl, the glug bowl, chicken instructions, and a set of six mini egg cartons, each ready to hold four eggs. I had actually ordered my chicken coop. Now all I needed were chickens.
Three days after the chicken class, I drove to a local feed store to get my chicks. Tom, the owner, greeted me heartily and asked what I was looking for. I reminded him that we had spoken the day before about the chicks he was getting in, and I wanted two. “These round washtubs are the day-olds,” he said. I watched the little peeps as they tottered, fell, pecked at each other, climbed on top of each other, ate and drank, and did it all again. Some slept in the midst of the chaos.
As I bent down to look more closely, Tom asked again, “Are you sure you want only two? Chickens are social creatures; they like a crowd.” Never ask a woman if she wants more baby chicks while she’s looking at a tub full of bobbing fluff balls. “Well…maybe I could take three.” If my coop had been bigger, I might have walked out with the entire washtub of fuzzy orbs that morning.
I knew I wanted an Easter egg chick, the mixed breed of Araucana and Ameraucana that lays colorful green, blue, or pink eggs. Beyond that I was clueless. “The brown-and-black ones will lay colored eggs,” Tom explained. “The gold ones are Buff Orpingtons, and they’re a good hen,” he added.
Now that I was getting three, I wanted three different breeds. “Well, I don’t have any other day-olds but these over here are just a few weeks old.” They looked huge next to the baby chicks. I decided to stay with the day-olds. As I peered into the fuzzy, swarming tubs, I recalled an old Star Trek episode about Tribbles. It was disconcerting.
Was there some trick to choosing baby chicks, like examining a mare’s teeth and hooves when you buy a horse? If so, the feed store owner wasn’t going to let me in on the secret. So I developed my own criteria: (1) Let sleeping chicks lie. Any chicks that could sleep in that cacophony must be comatose; (2)