Which One of You Bitches is My Mother?

I have always loved that line, spoken by the great Phoebe Cates (Mrs. Kevin Kline), in an old Judith Krantz mini-series about three rich girls who go off to a boarding school in Europe, one of whom gets pregnant and they all cover for each other. I can't remember what else happens, except that Phoebe Cates is the baby, and, grown up, tracks down the three now middle-aged women to find out the answer to above question.

Of course, never did I dream that I would be able to use that line, but now, in my daydreaming, I imagine one of the four little chicks going up to the big hens and posing that question--which, of course, would lead us to the first chicken-based mini-series, hopefully in prime-time, which will pay for the feed.

For the first time, we actually had a hen sit on the eggs last spring--she sat for two weeks, and out of ten eggs, four hatched. It was fun checking them out each day, and even more fun watching them gradually break their way out into the world. But it was an Araucana who did all the sitting, and it's now apparent that the babies are Wyndottes,the offspring of a hen who met her unfortunate end (along with the one-eyed Barred Rock) when an animal burrowed into the coop one night last spring.

And so, as our daughter prepares to "fly the coop" (as in: "I'm 18 now so I can do whatever I want!") and we try to manage two different new flocks--the "teenagers," three Araucanas and two barred rocks, which we ordered from Murray McMurray, and four "babies," we try to remain zen.

Like water.

Yeah, right.