Little Girl Lost

On Saturday, I had one of the worst experiences of my life. It was brief, but I am completely traumatized.

Dusty and I were both doing work in the back yard. For those who don't know our house, a portion of the backyard is fenced off where the dogs live and there is a swing set and a sandbox. The rest of it is open to allow access to the fencing building. The garden is also in that area. Then, behind the fencing building, on the other side of an ally, and with raised sides, is a canal. I was planting the garden (and it really was 100 times more work than it sounds like- shoveling, hoe-ing, raking, weeding, adding in compost, and planting [oh, and btw, after all of that work it snowed today]) and Dusty was building a chicken coop on the other side of the fencing building. We worked and the girls played all morning.

In the early afternoon, we had to pick up a few things to finish up our respective projects, and after we got back from the store, we ran into our neighbors. They suggested that the girls would have fun playing with their daughters next door. That sounded good to all of us, and Petra and Talia headed over there to play. Dusty and I went back to work. Honestly, I didn't hate it until the very end. By that time, I was so exhausted that I didn't give a flying flip about much of anything, but I was determined to finish the garden so that it wouldn't just get put off forever. Finally, I was done. Hurrah! Dusty and I took a moment to tidy up, and I went next door to get the girls. The fence between our yards is solid wood, so I hadn't been able to see them for the last couple of hours. I called, "Petra! Talia! It's time to come home!" and Petra says, "Talia's not here, she went home."

My heart stopped. I screamed to Dusty, telling him that Talia was missing, and ran straight for the canal, which had only been filled a couple of days ago. I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe, and all I could say was, "Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh." That very day I had told our neighbors about Leorial's 2-year old daughter who had drowned in a canal. Dusty and the neighbors started looking, he in the canal downstream, the neighbor boys upstream, and the girls and mother in the neighborhood. I didn't know what to do. I was crying and walking toward the front of the house, hoping she was in the front. Petra stopped me and said, "I'm sorry, Mommy." What do you say to that? I was too panicked to really reassure her properly, but I didn't blame her in the slightest. I couldn't let her think that this was all her fault, so I told her so, but then I went on looking. I searched the house but she was nowhere. I ran back out to the canal, and was just thinking about calling the police (something that I hesitate to do because deep down I'm afraid of them, which is ridiculous because I've never broken the law in my life), when the neighbors shouted that they had found her. I took her in my arms, crying in shock and relief, and she says, "What's wrong, Mommy?"

The 11 year old neighbor girl had let her walk back to our house by herself through the back ally. She didn't stop at our house, and walked all the way down the ally to the street that intersects ours. The kicker is that she walked right past me and I didn't notice her. Even after she was safe and well at home, I just kept seeing the muddy water of the canal and her brightly colored clothes floating in it.

I want to make all of these pronouncements about how I will never get annoyed with her again, and I will never let her out of my sight again, and how I will just hold her forever and ever. But, I know that any of those things would be a lie. I feel like all I can do is be more cautious, especially when it comes to the non-fenced portion of the backyard and young playmates who might not realize just how little Tal still is. I know all mothers probably go through this sort of thing at one time or another. I just hope that this is the only time it happens to me.

11 Babies

A couple of months ago, I got the idea to try and raise chickens. I want to do a few things to try and develop a more sustainable way of life. I'm not saying that I want to raise all of our own food and go without electricity or anything like that, but it does seem smart to develop a few skills so that if anything did happen, we wouldn't all starve to death. I'm going to raise a garden this year, and we are going to try and keep chickens, both for eggs and to slaughter for meat. I did a lot of research, and decided that I wanted a certain breed--black australorps. They are cold hardy, good layers, but also good meat animals.

There are a few different ways to start your own flock, but I decided to incubate our own eggs. I bought fertile eggs off of e-bay, believe it or not. Incubating is a very finicky process--the eggs have to be kept at a reasonably steady temperature (roughly 99.5 degrees F), turned at least 3 times a day, and have a descent amount of humidity. Because we didn't want to spend over $100 on an incubator, Dusty built one. However, our incubator doesn't have a built in thermostat, so we had to adjust the temperature several times a day. We weren't able to keep it constant throughout, so we aimed for between 99 and 101 degrees. Humidity was also a problem. We had a cup of water in there to try and keep things moist, but it was insufficient, so I took to spraying the eggs with water every time I turned them, but this lowered the temperature so we had to be careful about that, too. I also decided to turn the eggs five times a day instead of three, because from what I read, the more the better. There are automatic egg turners, but again, more money than we wanted to spend. We tried candling the eggs a few times to see if any chickens were growing but we could never really figure out what we were seeing.

When we reached hatching day (all chicken eggs hatch within 21-22 days of beginning incubation), Dusty and I had very little hope of any of the eggs hatching. Under the best of circumstances, only 60% of the eggs will hatch, and we had had so much temperature variation, that we didn't think that it would work. Lo and behold, only one egg started to hatch. It took him several hours to hatch, and I stayed up until midnight waiting for him to get out of there. The next morning there was one more, and then later three more, until finally eleven of the chicks hatched! It was more than we'd ever dreamed of! There was one poor little guy who, a full day after all of the other eggs had hatched, started trying to get out, but he didn't make it very far. Dusty tried opening the egg (without much hope) and he did die. However, every single one of our other chicks survived. Only three eggs didn't hatch at all.

The chicks are now living in a "brooder box" in our basement until they are old enough to move outside or be slaughtered, about 8-10 weeks. Now, they are only a week old, but they are growing their "grown-up" feathers on the tips of their wings. I guess I may come to regret this whole enterprise, but, while it has been stressful at times (worrying about whether or not they will hatch, etc.) so far it has been quite rewarding. Tomorrow I am going to take one of the chicks to Petra's school for show and tell while they are still cute.

PS-I apologise for the lack of proper paragraphs. I know that this makes long selections harder to read. I tried several times to insert breaks, but blogger wouldn't let me, so it's not my fault.