On Colored Chicks

It’s that time of the year again. Close to Easter, and the Easter chick vendors are out again in force.
Have you ever been stuck in traffic, with four kids in a car, and one of those chick vendors was showing these cute little fluffy and puffy colored chicks through the window, and then you tried to pull up again, leaving the guy and his colored chicks behind?

That's what you call a riot. 

The roadside chick vendor are out in force again

I ended up buying four. A pink one, a lime green one, an orange one (we’re Dutch after all) and a purple one.
Didn’t your parents buy them for you when you were young? In Holland, the Animal Protection Services would be on it right away. I think they dip them in food coloring, or some sort of dye, but my SIL insist they get injected with color. But this is not a Dutch phenomenon, and so the very first time I got to Lebanon, I bought myself some colored chicks during Easter. I thought they’d make nice pets; nobody told me they all die anyway. 

The latest addition to our ever growing animal menagerie

They die of exposure, dehydration, lack of proper care, clenched children's hands, and if not, other household hazards contribute to an early ending. In my case - which was when my son was young - the dog ate them one afternoon, while they were walking around on the balcony. But the cats were eye-balling them too. 

 
 But there’s always this one lone ranger that makes it, against all odds. And (s)he grows into one ugly chicken, nasty and all, pecking your legs, and causing quite a stench, and you end up having to find a farm somewhere that is willing to take your chicken, because a chicken in the city doesn’t work.

Beirut is slowly becoming a ‘real’ city, but it wasn’t that long ago that there was a plot of land in my street with a little wooden shack on it, and the tenants had chickens and a rooster. And that rooster would crow every morning, well before the first call for prayer of the mosques.

Our home made chicken warm-holder machine contraption



But our four chicks are going to make it. Our housekeeper knows about chickens; they need to stay 45 days under a lamp, she says. And so now I’ve got a chicken breeding contraption in the kitchen. The old aunt is not amused. She’s old school; she hates all animals.