Chick and Duckling Power

Our new chicks and ducklings are set to arrive within the next 72 hours.  Like most other babies, we are expecting a call in the dark of the night announcing their arrival, but this time it will be the US Postal Service asking us to take the little peepers off their hands.  According to the postal worker I spoke to, the sorting room is rather echo-y and it doesn't take long for the peeping to be rather distracting and slightly annoying.  I also have the feeling that they don't want any dying from a chill on their watch.  So, we'll relieve the USPS as soon as we can.  We will all have a set of clothes next to the bed ready for the 4:30 AM call, the camera battery will be charged and the feeders and waterers filled.  We'll click on the heat lamps before we head out so the brooder will be nice and warm for when we return with our box filled will fluffy beings.

My daughter has begun to invite every other child she knows over to the house to cuddle the chicks and duckies, by the time they arrive we will have an entire elementary school and soccer league camping on the lawn.  This brings me back to my last post about lack of community in the suburbs, this will be a "building" experience.  I'll invite parents in, provide snacks and generally be the hostess.  We found pet chickens to have the magnetic power, years ago when our last batch of chickens were little. We often came home to find neighborhood kids in our backyard looking at the pullets, so much so that we had to put a lock on the coop, because they would take them out to play, but forget to put them back and leave them vulnerable to predators.  There was also the issue of flying.  I repeatedly told the kids that the chickens didn't fly, but it seemed that every little boy in the neighborhood had to test that by throwing the chickens high in the air only to see the the panicky  chickies struggle, flap furiously, and plunk back down on the ground, so the coop had to be locked to prevent the girls from suffering from these indignities.

One challenge this time will be  that the company that is sending them will put in extra cockerels to help keep the chicks we ordered warm for their journey, heat packs won't last for three days, but body heat does.  The issue of what to do with the cockerels afterwards has been something I have pondered in my red chair.  What the family has decided is that they will be called broilers and we will do what our grand parents used to do, learn how to eat our own home raised chickens.  These boys will be farm animals, the girls will be pets.  Since we would rather not have cock fights in the back yard and know that our land is abutting other properties whose owners might not appreciate an early wake up call from a rooster, this is the way it has to be.  From my experience living in a community that had roosters years ago, is that after a few weeks, you don't really hear them--they become part of the background, but then never annoyed me in the first place.  I'm afraid that someone in the HOA-type neighborhood that abuts the back of our property with their professionally landscaped lawns, etc. might not take too kindly to farm sounds.

Ducks are new for us.  We've done our reading, spoken to folks with ducks, prepped as best we can, now it is up to trial, error and further research.    A new adventure!!

Mama Nirvana

Random topics, I'm just writing about my observations for the day and the bits and pieces my brain has chosen to record.

Today it was a soccer game played by 10-12 year old girls, but it wasn't just the girls...the parents, the coaches, the refs, so many people to watch!!

Just before the game I overheard the coach tell the team that they were there to play soccer and to play soccer wasn't about defending their goal, but it was about scoring points.  So, therefore their job was to head out in that first quarter and score points.  Oh, they tried, and tried and tried and I'd lose you if I wrote tried for the number of shots on goal those girls made, but they kept the game near the goal and the defenders were left bored to tears at the far end of the field.  Half of the field was a frenetic mass of arms and legs, shifting and moving, it was intense.  Meanwhile, focusing a little closer to where I was sitting, the parents were just are frenetic, with their sideline coaching, cheers of encouragement and sighs of disappointment.  The narrow river of chairs had waves of arms pointing up and down field, pointing to the one open and critiquing their own kids' performance with dramatic gestures.  They were just as intense as the players. My husband and I were a little quieter than most of the parents, mostly because our daughter was soaking up rays on the defensive line waiting for the ball to finally cross the mid-line. 

The second quarter came with a 0-0 score to start, but once the girls score their first goal there would be nothing stopping them.  The deliberate tripping of the girl in possession of the ball (twice), comments overheard from opposing girls about how they were going to "take them out" were to no avail.  Near the end of the third quarter when the score was 5-0 the parents on the far side of the field became quieter, I guess they were mentally composing what they were going to say in the car on the way home, was it going to be: "That was a good game you played, your team tried very hard, maybe next week..." or would it be a lecture on playing as a team or a chat about sportsmanship and or giving your best or just stony silence.

My lecture burst forth from my lips at the end of the third quarter when I found out that my bored defender was going to get the chance to play mid-field, a position that she thoroughly enjoys, but has less experience playing.  During practice and the first game she had never 'turned on her jets" as we call it when she runs so fast that other parents comment about it, the coach made asked her what would make her a good mid-fielder and she said her speed in running.  He indicated that he wasn't so sure. I just told her, "You' been practicing a month and have played one full game and your coach doesn't even know that you can run really fast.  Well, it is about time to show him, because if you want to play mid-field this is your chance, prove to him you can play mid-field,  otherwise expect to always be a defender."

Not only did she listen, she was a joy to watch.  There is a state I'll call "Mama Nirvana" when I watch my child do something and it is just so beautiful that I am speechless (well, this time I wasn't so speechless, I was at a  soccer game after all), but earlier times when I have seen her run it is as if time slows down and the world narrows to the strip of field, beach or yard where she seems to elegantly glide with above the ground.  The first time I saw her run in that way was when she was four, she ran up and down the beach at the water's edge with me jogging behind to keep up.  She seemed to enter a Zen-like zone and glided like a little horse over the sand.  She only stopped when I couldn't keep up any longer and reluctantly shouted that she needed to stop. The spell was broken, and she walked on the sand just like she normally did.  On that same beach two years before (yes, at the age of two), she had entered that same quiet state while watching sandpipers and slowly walked into the center of the flock without disturbing them.

Back to the soccer game, she got a  shot on goal, but no score and her team finished the game 6-0.  I felt sorry for the other team, they had played hard and had no points to show for it.  There were no lectures in our car on the way home.  Another game tomorrow, I hope it goes well!  After all of the beauty of today tomorrow could be very different, especially since a horse stepped on my daughter's foot late this afternoon and she spent the evening icing it.  Gliding might not be in the playbook.