The Chickens

About a month ago we had chickens at the library. It's seriously been one of my favorite things we've done here. I've always wanted to incubate chicks because my sister got to in 1st grade and I was so jealous. Finally, fourteen years later, my moment came.

All of us picked an egg and watched it everyday, waiting for any signs they were about to hatch. I picked a green egg because it's my favorite color. It's so good I took this picture because when the chickens had finally hatched, no one could agree on how many original eggs there were, so I was able to prove them wrong.

Finally one fateful Tuesday morning, we saw a crack inside an egg. That's when the hopping from the desk to the egg began. We all took turns all day, waiting for the first chicken to hatch, which was Katie's. As soon as there was that little crack, we could hear him cheeping all the way at the desk. However, for all that cheeping, it took him seven hours to emerge.

The first chicken was named Weasley and we were all in love instantly.

As soon as Weasley was out of his egg, the egg next to him started cracking, fast. While Weasley had opened multiple spots all over his egg, the second chicken made a straight line across the egg and came right out. Weasley was laying on his stomach flopping around, while the second chicken sat straight up, looked all over the incubator as if to claim it as his own. Which he did. The second chicken was quite the bully, and we named him Dwight stripes. (I say him fully knowing that most of them are probably girls) Dwight Stripes came out right as we closed.

The next morning going into work, I expected there to be three, maybe four chickens hatched. Nope, there were seven scurrying around in there.

The rest of them hatched throughout the day, and we took turns naming them. My chicken came out right as we were leaving so I'm not a hundred percent sure that my chicken was mine, since I only saw all black feathers. Out of the eighteen eggs we started with, thirteen hatched.

Their names were:

Weasley

Dwight Stripes

Benicio (I was trying to name him after Vincent D'Onofrio in Magnificent Seven, but I forgot the actors name and said Benicio Del Toro. Not even close, but the name stuck.)

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were two chickens who looked exactly the same and were pretty dumb compared to the others.

Friar and Tuck- two black chickens with yellow circles on their heads that looked like bald monks

Duckling- who seriously looked like a duck

Darkling

Sophia Lauren

Terry Crews

Shelob who had a spider on her back

and Little Foot who came out foot first

Here's Dwight Stripes and I. He was my favorite, even if he was mean and pecked at the other chickens eyes. He was a brave little fellow and let me pick him up.

Here's the Darkling, my chicken. She was all black, and I named her after a Leigh Bardugo character. I tweeted her about it and she was so excited that we had library chickens.

They grew incredibly fast, and while it was sad to see them go, they were much too big for their little box.