Chicks, Man.

Recently I went to a friend's house who lives a few towns over.  A few towns over is like another universe when you live in a place where everyone seems to know everyone, and you cannot go get a gallon of milk at the supermarket without running in to three people that you know.  I needed to get away from this for a day, so I hit up a friend who shops at a completely different supermarket.

She lives on this pseudo farm, where vegetables are grown, and chickens lay eggs, and there's a cranky pig, and a couple of goats named Fern and Francine.  In addition to laying hens, they also raise chickens for slaughter, and they do their own slaughtering.  I know.

My friend and I were supposed to go on a walk, but she got a call that the chicks were in.  This meant that a box of two day-old chicks was waiting at the local post office.  They are put in a box in Iowa soon after they hatch and are shipped VIA MAIL across the country.  They can survive in this box with no food or water for three days, but you can't just let them hang around a post office while you take a walk, so we scratched our walk and drove into town to pick up the chicks. 

I got to hold them on my lap in the car.  25 little chicks, peeping and crawling all over each other.  When we got back to the farm, our job was to take them one by one out of the box, teach them to drink by putting their little beaks in the water and making sure they make swallowing signals, and then let them explore their new environment.  There was a heat lamp, but they all snuggled in a sunbeam on one side of their enclosure.  They're pretty irresistible, and it was so nice to pick one up and snuggle it under my chin and give it little kisses. 

They shat in my hand, and I didn't care.  Little sweet chicks. 

Chick shit.

In four months or so, my sweet little babies will be taken to an upside down traffic cone where their heads will be chopped off.  Makes you want some nuggets, doesn't it?

The babies have grown!

Then we went inside and my friend cut my hair and gave me bangs.  But that's a whole other thing.