I grew up in the city, but I have always held an idealized notion of farm life. A classic red barn,

Old McDonald sort of farm is what I longed for in my childhood, not sprawling fields of crops

but just a place to keep some animal companions. I relentlessly begged to adopt every

creature that could be found in the zoo or on Noah’s Arc as a pet.

I hope every kid gets at least one moment in school that lights up a spark behind their eye. For

me, it was our second-grade biology project: hatching chickens from eggs. Each morning I

would rush to class and peer into the incubator, even though there was nothing to see but the

same old dozen eggs just sitting there. It didn’t matter; just imagining that these seemingly

lifeless objects were soon going to change into something else was thrill enough for me.

The day they hatched was like Christmas morning. I joined the cluster of kids peering into the

incubator to find several of the eggs already replaced with tiny, damp little birds, panting from

the exhaustion of finally breaking out into the world. Eventually, they fluffed up and began

exploring the world of the plastic bin we set up as their home. Our teacher made a valiant effort

to keep up the lesson that day, but it was an uphill battle.

I was obsessed. I would tell anyone who would listen about our new class pets. The chicks

even made it into my writing material at the time.

“What is a baby chick’s favourite food?” I wrote, with a drawing of a chick to accompany it.

“Peep-za.” I answered, with a flourish of self-satisfied pride, and ran off to show my mom.

This may have in fact been the peak of my writing career. I can only hope to ever write anything

of this caliber again.

Eventually the chicks got too big for the classroom, the teacher sent them home to a farm

upstate (I think it was an actual farm, at least I hope it was) and I moved on to other science

projects and another school.

It wasn’t until I got to high school that I learned that the second-graders here had no such

project. They were completely missing out! So I got permission to set up an incubator in one of

the science classrooms, and became the advisor of the biology club. Not only did I get to see

that tiny yet enormously brave act of cracking into life once again, but I also got to see a whole

new group of young people become spellbound by it — and that was even better.