This Sunday, I went in to the lab to finish up some reports and things on the computer (my laptop is still not revived!) and I thought I would complete work quickly and have the afternoon off to faff around.
When I got there, two of the grad students who had also come to the lab to finish up some work, were panicking. Apparently, some of the eggs left in the incubator had hatched. One chick had died already and they had no idea what to do with the three others that had hatched. The chicks were crouched in a warm glass bowl waiting for their down to dry up and building up energy before they could stand (I guess.)
We fed them sugar water but not very successfully. Finally one of them began to move about a lot more and appeared to be a lot drier than the other two. I picked it out of the bowl and decided to keep it in a tray and see if it would stand up and walk about and whether we could feed it some more.
But no, this chick decided it liked the warmth of my hand and nestled nicely in it and fell asleep. Any attempts to put it back in the tray resulted in it cheeping loudly and trying to hop out of the tray and walk towards me. Guess it thought I was its mom! 🙂
This meant I had to sit there the rest of the afternoon feeding it and keeping it warm (and taking turns with the other two who seemed weaker.) No more hopes of finishing work quickly, I sat in front of the computer typing with one hand and holding this little chick in the other.
A Sunday well spent. I suppose.