Today my babysitter brought a gift to work for the Beast. A baby chicken. A real live endlessly cheeping one. With fluffy soft wings and little webbed feet. The Beast is completely entranced with it. 'My chicken!' (much embracing and squeezing and smothering of aforementioned chicken.) Miraculously, the bird has made it alive through the day. It has a little box for it to sit in which it is NOT sitting in because it is sitting on the Beast's head. Sitting on the Beast's lap as they watch Hi-Five together. Sitting on the table next to the Beast while she feeds it globby pieces of her GF bread. It ALMOST was taken into the bathtub with the Beast until I saved it from a watery bedraggled death by insisting the creature wanted to come and sit next to the computer with me. (Yeah right.)
The oldest two think this new love affair is hilarious. They were dreaming up names for the chicken when they came home from school...names like - Egg, Fluffball, Pest, KFC, and Chicken Little. Then JB thought of the perfect name, "I know, let's call it NUGGET! And then when it grows bigger, we can call it McChicken!" (This is the same boy who named our pet pigs last year...Ham and Bacon. Gleefully.)It was decided, but then I had to assert my authority and remind them that the Beast's fave food is chicken nuggets from McDonalds. In fact, nuggets are the ONLY foodgroup the Beast will eat that contains meat of any kind. ( Dont burst my bubble and tell me that Mcdonalds nuggets actually contain NOT a speck of meat, i couldnt handle the reality.) The Beast is rather clever for her age. If she made the connection between beloved nuggets and her newly beloved friend...then she just might refuse to eat them anymore. Aaargh! So as I was forbidding them to say the word nugget, the 8 yr old Princess walked in and wanted to know what was so funny. JB let her in on the secret and threatened death and mayhem if she repeated it to the Beast. At which the Princess exclaimed with a look of absolute shock and horror - "You mean - they make nuggets from little chickens?! I didnt know that...Im NEVER eating nuggets again!"
I dont know who to be more worried about. An 8 yr old who doesnt know that chicken nuggets are made from chickens. A 15 yr old who thinks a pet chicken called Nugget is cause for side-splitting humour. Or a teensie-weensie chicken who is being smothered to death with love as the Beast hugs it fiercely.
Im going to ponder it all. As I go for a ride to Mcdonalds.