Afternoon Naps

Henrietta was buried today under a warm sun, beside our pond, and on a bed of soft fern leaves, fragrant blue muscari, and miniature pansies.  Pink, orange, red, and white tulip petals covered her tiny body, and I planted yellow tulips above her.  It was really lovely, so no more sadness.

Her sisters are doing great!  Alberta and Gertrude did have sticky bottom, but I cleaned them up, and they're fine.  Sticky bottom is when poop cakes on the chick's "vent" (that's what my book calls it).  If the chick's "sticky bottom" isn't cleaned off, the little bird gets plugged up and can eventually die.  A little warm water, gentle picking, and triple antibiotic to grease the feathers a bit, and . . . voila!  In case you're wondering, I've watched both Alberta and Gertrude poop since then.

I was watching them a lot this morning, and some personalities are starting to come out.  Phillipa is the most fearless (sometimes I call her Phillipa the Brave, but Phillipa the Bossy is probably more accurate).  The other girls avoid eye contact with me when I look in on them and they are still kind of timid when I pick them up, but not Phillipa.  She will stare right at me and defiantly pooped on my hand when I picked her up this morning.  She has beautiful markings on her face, too.  There's a little yellow spot at the corners of her beak, and a little yellow flash (it looks like a brush stroke) at the corners of her eyes.  She has no qualms about jumping on and over the other girls like a frog hopping from one lilly pad to the next.

Alberta is the next most rambunctious.  She is a little shyer than Pip, but can definitely hold her own.  As the only yellow one in the bunch, she sort of reminds me of the Boy Named Sue.  She can and does jump on and over the others, but her preferred method of asserting her presence is to just juggernaut her way around.  

Vera and Gertrude are great, too, and I can't wait to see their personalities come out in the days to come.  For now, I'm entertained just watching them sprint around and listening to their chirps.

After all of this running and jumping and a delicious lunch of chick feed, the girls all snuggled down for a well-earned afternoon nap.