We went to the Museum of Science and Industry today—and let’s call it today still even though it is already past midnight. I’m not quite ready for it all to end.
The museum was so cool I almost cried several times. It took us until close to closing time, but we finally found the Chick Hatching exhibit, Middle and I. She had been talking about it all day, but there was so much to see and do. By the time we got there we were tired, brains bursting. I wasn’t expecting much.
It turns out I had forgotten what I know about hatching chicks. All day I imagined fluffy yellow things, even though I knew better. The fluffy yellow things were next door to the hatching and newly-hatched. What we walked up to was a scene of devastation. Eggs, eggs with cracks, and broken eggs. A few sprawled wet creatures that hardly seemed alive except for occasional great lunging out-of-control efforts to lift up their heads. Mostly, though, they were resting, wasted. And of course. According to the plaque nearby it can take up to 10 hours for a chick to emerge from its shell.
And I couldn’t help wondering: what if we expected every birth, every rebirth, every breakthrough, to leave us like this for a while?
