teaberryblue | I’m sittin’ in the railway station (Reply)

…waiting to go home from Delaware. The train is about ten minutes late, and the GPS overestimated the length of our trip by about 30 minutes, so all in all I have had about an hour in the station. They just announced the train delay, so I though I’d take a few moments to update, because, wonder of wonders, the Wilmington train station has free wireless for its passengers. Excellent, I say!

Had a lovely weekend with my family. Grandparents are doing well, and I got to see my cousin Jeremy for the first time in about twenty years. He has five kids now! One daughter from his first marriage, three stepchildren, and a new baby! His kids are all adorable and precocious and amazing and they were so much fun. We went to my cousin Shannon’s wedding reception (she got married in the Carribean somewhere, I forget where), and had a delicious cake which is the official state cake of Maryland, that I’d never had before. It was one of the best wedding cakes I’d ever had (traditionally, it’s chocolate, but Shannon had it in strawberry, orange, and banana. I tried strawberry and orange as bananas are my mortal enemy.)

Some sad news, though! Chick Luisi, aka Salty Bob (according to Jess) died this weekend. My dad got up to the house and found her with her neck broken in the hen yard.

At first he didn’t tell us her neck was broken and I felt terrible and horribly guilty that we didn’t do enough to prevent heat stroke, or that maybe the chickens had gotten sick and would all die.

But then he told us about her neck, and while I am still sad that we lost a chick, it sounds like it was the work of one of the bigger chickens, which, I hear happens from time to time. We suspect Chick Luisi was not really a hen but a rooster (she was showing signs of not being female) and this is not uncommon. My dad is still sort of freaking out and thinks a wild animal got into the henyard, so he took a giant Santa Claus that my parents use as Christmas decoration and set it up outside because he is convinced that will scare away the wild animals. My mother is convinced it will just weather damage Santa.

Anyway, very sad to lose a chick. :-( Here is the last picture I took of her last weekend.