"Mom, I found a chick in the parking lot. I think it has an eye infection. Can we keep it?"
"Uh. Where's its mom? Try to reunite it with its mom first."
10 minutes later, "Mom, I found another chick with half a leg."
"Oh! Half a leg is okay. Did you reunite the sick one with its mom and rescue the crippled one? Birds can live with one leg." I imagined tiny crutches, a robotic prosthesis, a harness and wheel, a pirate peg.
"No, it stumped away too fast to catch, I still have the one with the eye infection."
"Of course you do. Alright, let's see it."
I immediately wished I had not seen it. It was either on the receiving end of a very brutal pecking, or it is infected with warty chicken-face plague. Or both. But it just doesn't seem interested in dying, so it is living in a cat carrier and I have replaced its mother with a hot potato wrapped in a sock while it eats medicated chick crumble and submits to antibiotic eye ointment. Everyone is under vigorous quarantine rules and has to scrub like a surgeon any time they touch the thing, so that our nice fat broody hens don't catch the pox.
I've named the chick Ruth. Baby Ruth. Because it looks like Sloth, from the Goonies. Sorry, chicken.
Tea time
And while I was juggling a diseased chicken, there was also a birthday party to pull off. It went off without a hitch, because all the disaster mojo was preoccupied with my mother, who was trying to make a tiered cake with cream cheese frosting. The weather was too warm for soft icing, and all the layers tried to slither off onto the floor. She finally tied the whole thing together with candy, and the kids were SO EXCITED.
It was a good weekend to turn 4.
Those cheesecake squares are Japanese cotton cheesecake - which needs no crust, takes less cream cheese, and is completely amazing. Go make some.
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