Posted on by Dad4Gracie

Family Photo Friday!

Family Photo Friday

Each Friday when possible, I’d like to post a photo of Gracie or one of my other chickens…maybe all them! This is so everyone can have a better idea of the inspirations behind the cartoons posted here. (Yes, Gracie is a real chicken, not just a cartoon chicken!)

Hold onto your heart! This week’s photo is of Rudy before she was even a week old. You can see her first real wing feathers developing. The colors and patterns are really nice too. All of the chicks seem to be even happier and more excited (if that’s possible!) when their wing feathers start coming in and developing. It’s like they can’t wait to try them out!

I will do my best to post each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Every “Like,” “Follow,” and “Comment” is truly appreciated!

Posted on by Dad4Gracie

My Life With Gracie…Your Real Self

About Being Yourself

This week’s three posts feature marshmallow candy chicks called “Peeps”. They were one of the items I once stocked at a nearby Navy Commissary with a real friend of mine, Dennis.

If any of my chickens ever tried to disguise herself as a Peeps marshmallow candy chick, it would be Pearl!

From the day I brought Pearl and Blanche home from the post office, Pearl was different. (Yes, that’s where chickens come from…at least when you live in the city.) They were the only two raised by themselves, and that may have made some difference.

Pearl was always noisier and more active than Blanche, and she never seemed to be able to settle down. Pearl wanted to entertain and be entertained. Blanche just wanted to eat.

Mishaps just seem to follow Pearl even today. She can’t help but turn over the food dish or the water bottle or climb on top of Blanche or one of the others to get to where she wants to be. I don’t like to admit this, but Pearl was my least favorite of all my chickens. She didn’t fit my idea of what a chicken should be.

I hoped she would get better when she and Blanche were introduced to the other chickens, but she just got herself into more trouble. Scolding didn’t help, not from me or from the other chickens. Reasoning didn’t help. (Can you even reason with a chicken?)

I could tell she wanted to be good like the others especially because none of the others really wanted to be around her, not even when it was time to roost at night. She tried to be like the others with all she knew how to do, and then the next minute there would be another chicken calamity.

She was an outcast. Perhaps that’s what changed my mind about her.

Then I realized no matter what any of us did, she was going to be Pearl, and we really shouldn’t have been upset with her for being herself. Pearl simply loves being a chicken. Sometimes her exuberance and joy causes her to get carried away.

When we all started appreciating her for who she was, she actually began to calm down…well, somewhat!

Perhaps if she had been raised by a Mama Chicken instead of a Chicken Daddy, things would be different for her and she would have struggled less to be liked. Now she seems to understand how we appreciate her for being the crazy chicken she was hatched to be.

My Life With Gracie made me realize it’s never good to cover up who you really are just to be liked.

I will do my best to post each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Every “Like,” “Follow,” and “Comment” is truly appreciated!

About Being Yourself

Posted on by Dad4Gracie · 2 Comments

My Life With Gracie…Your Real Friends

What's On The Inside

This week’s three posts feature marshmallow candy chicks called “Peeps”. They were one of the items I once stocked at a nearby Navy Commissary with a real friend of mine, Dennis.

Friendship is a curious thing. It’s not always easy to figure out. What makes a friendship happen? What keeps some of the oddest friendships together for life? What makes a friendship end?

With friendship for baby chicks, at first they are just a mass of peeping fluff and excitement with all of them all over the place all of the time! Eventually patterns form and connections happen.

One of the most curious things I’ve found is that if you have only two of the same kind of chicks being raised in a variety of chicks, those two will eventually find each other and become friends. That is a mystery to me.

There just seems to be something on the inside helping little chicks to find others of their own kind who are compatible with them. But it’s not with how they look on the outside.

How do they know what kind of chick they are? It’s not like they can look at themselves in a mirror! They can’t really see their own feathers yet. They can’t look down and see that they are a ball of white or black or yellow feathers and then find their matching chick. Somehow they just know.

My own theory is it has something to do with the sounds they make. Maybe it’s a specific pattern of peeping. Maybe it’s a specific sound pitch. No matter how it happens, they are able to identify others as “friends like me” even with all of the noise they are all making.

People are a lot like that too. Only its not about sound patterns and pitches. With people, it’s more about the content of what is said. Kind hearts on the inside send kind words to the outside.

My Life With Gracie reminded me just because someone looks like a friend on the outside, you won’t know for sure until you listen to what’s on the inside.

I will do my best to post each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Every “Like,” “Follow,” and “Comment” is truly appreciated!

What'S On The Inside