Today’s chick pic

I am not going to turn into one of those people who posts pictures of cute animals and anthropomorphizes every shake of a beak or flap of a winglet or blink of a beady eye.

I hope.

Chicken Day!!

I’ve been talking about adding chickens (and goats and pigs and turkeys and ducks and heaven knows what else) to our Forest for a while. BH got jazzed about the challenge of building a safe chicken coop out of scrap lumber and I have been lusting after eggs, and

WARNING!! VEGETARIANS SKIP THE NEXT GRAF!

chicken that I can eat without being afraid of what the critter was fed, or how terribly it was treated during its life.

I stopped talking and took bold action a few weeks ago and ordered 15 Buff Orpington chicks. The post office called this morning; the girls had arrived and were peeping loudly.

So we drove down to pick them up.

This is what they looked like when we opened the box.

Task #1: show them to the watering hole.

They learned the water lesson very well.

  Task #2: eating. They are good at this, too! This is when I counted and found we had been shipped 16 instead of 15 chicks. It is very likely that a few will die of natural causes in the next few weeks, I am told, so the spare will come in handy.

  All that drinking and eating, not to mention the arduous trip courtesy of the US Postal Service, made them tired. Task #3: naptime.

Chicks falling asleep on their feet might just be the cutest thing ever.

Stay tuned for more chicken adventures!

Yep, I’m still here!!

No, I have not dropped off the face of the planet. I’ve just been a bit busy.

BUT!

You can see me ALL DAY at the Teen Book Festival in Rochester, NY this Saturday.

OR you can read my Book Brahmin interview at Shelf Awareness, in which I answer questions about books.

OR (blushing about this one) you can read this very nice, short piece written about me from the director of the Kalamazoo Public Library.

And if you give me a couple of minutes, I’ll show you what Mother’s Day looked like in the Forest yesterday.

AND you can enjoy this picture of what Mother’s Day looked like in the Forest yesterday.

Truth in advertising: this is a picture from my camp, where we spent the day. It’s about 40 minutes away (and 1000 feet higher) than my house. We did get snow at home, too, for about an hour, but the rain washed it all away.

Instead of writing a blog today…

I’ll be busy at the New York SLMS conference, hanging with awesome librarians, and (rumor has it) picking up the Knickbocker Award, which I am stoked about.

Details and pics later, I promise.

Be sure to squeeze in some poetry today and make time to hug a librarian!!!!