I Told You That I Would Overwhelm You with Cuteness

I promised a couple of weeks back that I would post photos of the araucana hen and her brood when I had time. Since then, I've had at least a week's worth of days that came with plenty of free time; I'm just lazy and not good with soft deadlines. I finally got around to taking some photos yesterday. The chicks are no longer the cute little puffballs that could run in and out of their cage at will, but they're still cute.

But first an example of the fact that nothing cute will last. It was only a month and a half ago that these ducks looked like...

this. I'd forgotten how rapidly ducks grow, and how much they eat and drink. Ducks are downright gluttonous. They've also outgrown two pens. I really need to figure out something bigger to keep them in while still giving them access to the pond.

Here's the araucana hen. She's been trying to hatch a brood for the past two years and this is the first time she's managed it. Her past failures have always been beyond her control, but even then, she wasn't too happy about me poking some strange contraption into the cage with her babies. The chicks look like they're going to look like their papa, although a couple of the chicks look like they may end up with mama's ear tufts. If you look carefully, you'll notice that one of the chicks is actually perched on top of the hen. Several of them are fond of hitching rides on her back.

Here's the proud papa and the other woman. Actually, he wasn't all that proud of his kids. In fact, he pretty much ignored them. He was much more interested in getting the next round of chicks started. He started hitting on her about 30 seconds after she came off of the nest with her brood. I guess you could say it was kind of sweet that he still wanted to tap that ass even when she was the mother of five.

Speaking of the reproductive arts, here's a graphic organizer of good and bad things to say while having sex. I figured those of you not interested in domestic fowl needed something to justify reading this post.