(1140) Gender of chicks

Hatching was a thin and bad-tempered female chicken. My family became its owner when we moved into a semi-detached house in Silver City. Around that time I befriended an old retired lady teacher whom I called Mrs Lee. She sold me fertilised eggs at $1.20 each. I bought six and Hatching jealously guarded her adopted eggs and hatched them day and night.

It was funny that Hatching insisted on hatching her eggs in the garden under the noni tree. I attempted to move those eggs to a sheltered spot in the porch but she refused to co-operate. My fingers and toes were pecked many a time in those attempts. As it rained often in Silver City towards the end of the year, only two eggs hatched 21 days later.

The two chicks were drop-dead cute. One is mostly white with yellow spots. The other is a dull brown with a few black spots. Kenneth wanted the white chick but Elizabeth won the right playing one-two-som. Using their right hands, players could choose to be scissors, rock or paper. Should scissors meet paper, scissors would win. If rock meets scissors, then rock wins. When paper meets rock, then paper wins. The white chick was named snow white. Elizabeth dreamed about the many eggs to come out of snow white. She eats two half boiled eggs every morning. Three months later, we slowly realized that snow white was not a female.

Since we then lived within the city limits, actually we were not supposed to have chickens in our garden. But since the neighbours were so very agreeable and did not complain, we do not keep the loud cocks. Accordingly snow white at first crow was given to our right hand neighbour to slaughter. You see, there are many privileges of tolerating eccentric neighbours keeping chickens. I seemed to remember a few pieces of choice meat came back as curry chicken. Only my husband who usually ignored the chickens had the heart to eat those chicken pieces.