Counting chicks

I’ve been counting chicks before they are hatched. And no, I’m not saying it as  slang or a figure of speech.  I’m counting real eggs that will hatch anytime soon.

About two weeks ago, a free-range chicken strayed into our small garden and started foraging in the compost bin, a big plastic pail that originally contained house paint and is now filled with dried grass, fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grains and other organic, biodegradable garbage. We used these pails as makeshift compost bins in our efforts to reduce  garbage and produce our own fertilized garden soil.

So the chicken somehow found in this pile of organic trash a warm and cozy place to lay its eggs. With its feet, it began digging into the compost to make a nest out of  dried grass and leaves. It stayed there to lay a total of seven eggs.

I only found out one morning when the hen flew away as I approached the compost while watering the plants. I was surprised to see warm newly-hatched eggs.

When I first saw it, I thought of making omelets out of those native eggs. But then, I thought that it would be more exciting to just witness how they would hatch into  yellow chicks.

That would remind me of my childhood when we used to keep free-range chickens to supply us with eggs or white meat. The chickens would roam freely around the house and would always find their way back for feeding time, which was usually early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

So I felt like I just “owned” a chicken when I saw it sitting in the compost bin. I couldn’t wait to see the eggs hatch. Since that will take place in our garden, I could perhaps claim ownership to this accidental poultry. That is,  until anyone would come to claim original ownership.

They were  free-range chickens, so one need not bother about making cages for them. I delight at the idea that I am actually reliving my childhood experience, when we could just get an egg or two from our own hens  for my mother to cook us a tasty scrambled eggs or “sunny side up”.

Still, it was surreal how a hen could stray into the subdivision and occupy our compost bin. It was one of those surprises of suburban living, where you find yourself somewhere between the urban and the rural.

Where we live is very rural, although the SM shopping mall in Consolacion town is just  a five-minute ride away by tricycle. We are still surrounded by a mangrove forest that covers a big part of Cansaga Bay like a green carpet.

It is home to seabirds, herons and all sorts of marine life and insects. Once, I wrote in this column how I found a firefly on my pillow, blinking there one evening. A fantail bird also strayed into the living room and flew around the house before it found an open window to escape to freedom.

People living near the coast also try to raise livestock, goats and even cows that graze on  the open fields. Some of them casually cross the street to the dismay of drivers.

A lot of stray dogs and cats also find their way to our place. We  adopted one cat that turned out to be a mixed-breed.

It  came to our house to catch mice and rats that also feed on the compost bins. We rewarded it with leftover meat or fish, which we gladly want to dispose of  anyway. From our house, the cat, which my wife began calling Ginger, goes to other houses in the subdivision to ask for food with its emphatic meows.

So it is, more or less, a communal cat. That is why, desperate to attract it to become a mainstay rat-killer, although not a stay-in cat (we hate the smell of cat poo), my wife started augmenting leftovers with cat food but it didn’t seem interested. The cat still  prefers leftover meat or fish viands.

It’s fun to think of how our house could attract  stray animals that we adopt as stay-out pets. It makes you forget that you live  not too   far from the madding crowd in the shopping mall.
In the meantime, let me ease my sleeplessness by counting in advance our soon-to-be-hatched native chicks.