This morning I sent my daughter, PX, out to the back yard where we keep our chickens. Her chicken, Frodo, needed to lay an egg. And because of some modifications in our chicken yard, Frodo was not able to get to her favorite nesting bush. She was getting awfully frantic. So I sent PX to let her out; she went directly to “her bush.”

A few minutes later, PX inquired if she could feed the chickens some worms. Worms are a new item in the chicken’s diet. They are meal worms; my husband and PX purchased them at the fishing supply store the other day.

We have been giving the chickens two worms each. It’s not much, but the chickens are such little piggies; we know they would gobble the whole carton of worms at one sitting if we let them. So it’s been two (or three) worms a day.

PX came in and asked, “Ma, can I give them four?”

“OK.”

“How about five?”

“OK.”

PX is very methodical; so she sat at the kitchen counter carefully picking out worms from the sawdust packing material. After she had counted out the daily ration – in this case 20 worms – she decided to count the remaining worms in the plastic carton.

“27, Ma!”

Now that the worms were warming up, they began squirming and wiggling around. So, we brought the box of them close to our ears and listened to the worms. Yes, you can hear squirming worms! At close range, we could hear them easily: a rasping sound as their bodies moved under and over one other.

That was the last I saw of the worms. I moved on to another activity and PX took the worms out to the chickens. In the end the chickens received SIX worms each because one of “the girls” took one worm more than her portion, and PX made sure they all had the same “one worm more” to make things even.