Page 55 of Sugarplum Dreams
She got the oatmeal out and was stirring blueberries into it when the door burst open.
“Mommy! Mommy! You’ve got to come see this!”
Banks and Lavinia stood in the doorway, looking excited and like they could barely contain themselves.
“Is everyone okay?” she said, quickly turning the stove off and pulling the oatmeal off the burner.
“Mom, you have to see!”
“Mr. Wilson said that we can’t tell you, you just have to come.”
Maybe he hadn’t forgotten their anniversary after all. Although, as excited as the kids were, she still worried that maybe there was something wrong.
“I’m coming. Where we going?”
“Out to the truck.”
As she walked out the door, she saw her husband grinning, standing beside his truck, holding a brown box with little holes in it. Like air holes. It might be the kind of box in which a person would transport animals.
“What kind of animal did he get?”
Banks had a hold of one hand, Lavinia had a hold of the other, and they were both chattering at her side, or she might have heard the chicks chirping before she was standing right next to Wilson.
“Oh my goodness,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “You would not believe that I was just standing in the kitchen wishing that we had chickens because I don’t have enough eggs to do breakfast.”
“We should have more than enough eggs to do breakfast now, because you have fifteen Rhode Island Red hens in here.”
“Just hens?” she asked, crunching up her brows. “Don’t you need a rooster to have eggs?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “No. The hens will lay without a rooster, but you won’t get chicks if there is no rooster.”
“I see.”
“Wait a second. We won’t get chicks if we don’t have a rooster?” Gifford asked, looking concerned. “But how will we get more chicks?”
“I guess if your mom wants a rooster, we’ll have to get one.”
“So this is what you picked up at the post office?”
“Sure is,” he said, taking the box and walking the short distance to the picnic table that sat in the yard.
They had supper on it multiple times, especially that spring when the weather was nice.
But for now, he set the box on the table.
“So they mail chicks?” she asked, still trying to wrap her head around the idea that the post office would mail live animals.
“They do. Just before the chick hatches, it sucks up the yolk somehow so that when it hatches out of the egg, it can go for three days without eating or drinking anything. I would imagine that’s so that the mama hen who is sitting on the eggs can continue to sit after the first chicks are born and doesn’t have to take them directly to get water.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know that. So they have three days to ship them wherever they’re going?”
“That’s right,” he said as the kids begged to open the box. “These are your mother’s chickens, so I think she gets to be the one to do the honors.” He handed her his knife.
There was some kind of plastic strap around the box, which kept the lid closed tightly, although Charity could see little beaks poking out of the holes and could hear them chirping loudly.
“Just be careful when you do it, because they might be able to jump out, and while I think we can probably catch them, it won’t be good for them. They need the heat of each other to stay warm.”
“Oh my goodness. How are we going to take care of them? I don’t have?—”
