A new text from Audrey: "Would you please spritz my duck egg?"

I wonder if anyone else in the world got a text like that yesterday.  Sometimes I can't figure out why I'm so blessed.

I slid my feet into flip flops, nabbed the spray bottle and went out to the chicken coop, where we have strategically placed one duck egg under a hen who thinks she's hatching baby chicks.  Developing ducklings apparently need more humidity than a foster mother hen provides, so we're spritzing the egg with warm water several times a day.

Audrey hit the duck's nest last week while cutting hay.  Mama Duck thought that hiding herself and her clutch in the tall alfalfa was a good idea, but she was wrong.  She didn't enjoy her contact with the windrower, a big machine that cuts hay and crimps the thick stems and isn't good for ducks.  She is broken beyond repair, as are all but one of her eggs.  It's the greenish one, laying low and hoping Mama Hen won't notice the stowaway.

Duck eggs take between 19 and 29 days to hatch.  Chicken eggs only take 21.  We're going to be out of town from Day 7 to Day 15 after disaster struck.  We won't be here to spritz a duck egg or make sure the broody hen hasn't given up on it.

So we borrowed an incubator today, which is not only supposed to hold the eggs at the proper temperature, but also rotates them (five to seven times a day, just like Mama Duck would do) and provides the correct humidity.  So far, in our test run on the kitchen counter, the enclosure has been way too hot and way too cold; the reservoir providing the water doesn't flow into the hut, and the mechanism that rotates the eggs  is being wayward and difficult, sproinging its arm skyward and threatening to whap the motor upside down on the table.

This not a 1940s hairdryer or a brain-sucking machine in some cheap sci-fi flick.  It is THE INCUBATOR!

Isn't it amazing that hens and ducks and other birds can so easily take care of all these details, even though their brains are smaller than walnuts?  God's ways are best.

If we ever actually see this duck walking across the yard, I'm sure we'll laugh and remember why we believe in miracles.