Monday, May 9, 2011

Naming the chick - and the winner is..........drum roll, please.......

As you see, I'm a little late with the naming of Olive's new baby chick.  I had planned to do it on Mother's Day but got a little sidetracked.  Ever so often Mother's Day will hit me like a ton of bricks as you can see by my recent posts.  Spending a lot of time with Olive and baby today has been an exciting change of pace.   It's comical to see how small the chick is compared to Olive - she gets a little clumsy with it.  Today she stepped on one of it's little feet and didn't realize it.  The chick pulled and pulled trying to get her foot out.  I was afraid she was going to pull one of her toes off - the toes are so tiny and fragile.  She's not eating and drinking as well as I thought she should. I bought some special chick starter food, but they pellets are still too big.  I finally took my food processor and ground them up even smaller.  We've been giving Olive some of our overpopulated cicadas that are making so much noise and driving us crazy.  Olive will tear the cicada into little pieces for the baby chick.  Today it was carrying around a cicada leg in it's beak - so hopefully it will get all it needs.  The cicada leg was almost as big as the chick.

But enough of this - I need to get down to what you've all been waiting for.  Baby chick finally has a name.   The names you all submitted were all cute and funny.  The poll is in and the winner is.....drum roll, please .....  uh, oh, it was a tie.  Ruben / Ruby.... and Will / Willow.... tied for 1st place, followed closely by Bille / Billy and Cinco.  The plan was if it turned out to be a tie, my fourteen year old granddaughter would get to be the tie-breaker but when I asked her to break the tie, she had come up with an entirely different name - Basil - you know, like Olive Oil and Basil.  No fair, Chloe - you're not following the rules of the game.   "Well, I want it to be Basil", she said, as obstinate as most fourteen year old girls will be.  Too bad, so sad - so, I decided that I would be the tie-breaker since it is my chick.  I liked Will / Willow but finally decided on Ruben / Ruby because it's a strong name for an amazing little chick - and also because it makes good blogging sense.  The day to day adventures of "Raising Ruben" would make for a good read, don't you think?  So, it's Rube for now - and thanks to my blogging friend, thisisme, for suggesting it.

6 comments:

  1. I am with your Granddaughter I love the name Basil to go with Olive.

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  2. That would have been how my daughter would have reacted! One of our hens was named Mary - she always referred to her as "Chicken Formerly Known As Mary, Now Known As Maud." It was just too silly shouting all that out when you were trying to shoo her off the veg patch.

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  3. Hey, I've actually come first in something!!! Now that is a FIRST! LOL!! I like your idea of "Raising Ruben" though. When my little granddaughter comes to see me today, I will tell her that she might have a little chick named after her (Ruby) - if it's a little girl of course!! Your poor granddaughter though :( That was a very clever suggestion that she came up with. I suppose if it turns out to be a little girl, she could have been called Basilica!! (Just a name I've made up!). I feel that she is now my adopted chick, so please look after her for me!

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  4. Basil was a clever name, I agree. But it wasn't how we were to play the name game, lol. I told her she could call it Basil if she wanted to - at that age, they don't give a flip about chickens anyway. It will be quite entertaining to see crazy little Olive raising Rube. Her personality is so quirky anyway.

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  5. Rube is a lovely name for your little chicken. I like Basil too but only because I was a big fan of Basil in the Fawlty Towers series.

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  6. Okay, I think I've caught up with Olive and (my 14 year old pick - Popeye) lol. Ruben sandwich, Ruben Kincaid, Ruben James. He's already got a song named after him, be it a roo.

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