time begins 351beeline for the poultry barn. When I stepped inside I thought I heard a
new sound—a peeping sound. It was probably the sparrows that always
hung around the barn looking for spilled grain. “Don’t be disappointed,” I
counseled myself, and then repeated the warning aloud because Lily was
right behind me. I opened the door to the turkey coop and we slipped in-
side, approaching the nest- corner slowly, letting our eyes adjust to the
dimness inside the slatted turkey room. Number One Mom still sat on
her nest. She looked different, though, with her wings held out oddly
from her body. We stood still and watched.
There, under her wing, was it something? Lily squeezed my hand and
uttered a high- pitched squeak like a baby mouse. It was something. A tiny
dark eye, as small as a hatpin head, peeked out at us. A fl uffy head
emerged. Two heads!
One of them wiggled out from under Mama, and it was the real thing:
a ball of fluff just like a marshmallow peep, honey blond with a dark spot
on top of its head. We could see the white egg- tooth still on the end of its
beak. This chick was still damp from the egg, its fl uff a bit spiky and its
walk adorably uncoordinated. Lily looked at me with huge eyes and whis-
pered: “We have babies.”
“She has babies,” I said. This time they would be raised right, by a tur-
key mother, ending once and for all in our barnyard the indignity of un-
natural intervention. But my heart was on Lily’s side: we had babies. This
was about the youngest creature we had ever seen, tottering on wobbly
legs, falling over its feet.
It was hard to resist the temptation to scoop it up in our hands, but we
didn’t. We were dying to know how many more she had, how old, whether
the hatch was finished. But when we approached she lowered her head
and hissed at us, snakelike, rumpling her auburn feathers to make herself
twice her normal size. Then she looked away. Number One Mother had
bigger things on her mind now, and the instincts to do them perfectly.
She had been so faithful to her nest, she had to be hungry and thirsty.
Bribery might be just the ticket. Lily ran outside to gather a handful of
grass while I approached with a cup of water, holding it close enough for
her to get a long drink. She accepted détente and settled down. When
Lily came back with the grass, she gobbled it.