Hi. Your period has arrived. oOpS- I did it again. I played? with your heart. Got lost? in the game. Cause this... is in fact, Thriller. One of my favorite episodes of television ever is that episode of iCarly where Sam and Carly decide to raise chicks for their science project, but the chicks end up hatching earlier than expected and escape the incubator so Spencer has to crawl into the air ducts to find them and it's wild and awesome; And sure, it's completely out of any realm of possibility, but iCarly still remains the only TV show to ever exist. Mhm... Don't look that up. So one thing led to another, I was reminded of that episode. And thought to myself, "I sHoUld dO tHaT tOo! " So first thing's first, I'm the realest. So the first order of business: The incubator. Now I wasn't willing to sit on my eggs for 18 days, so I had to buy an incubator. Guess what? GUESS. Actually don't. Who would've thunk That incubators would be so expensive? *SFX Scream* But y'know the incubator had everything, the automatic egg-turner, the humidifier, so things were moist enough. The second thing I needed were the eggs, obviously. Kids, here's a lesson in biology from a struggling physics student. Much like humans, chickens have to- *Intense hand claps* -to have kids. Now farmers that produce eggs for the supermarket make sure to keep their male and female chickens separate so... ...they don't get fertilized... I think you know what that means. Now I chose to hatch quails because they're tiny, and they're pretty low-maintenance, especially for someone who's never had a pet before. So I searched on Kijiji for "fertile hatching eggs" and there were several options, the closest of which was an hour and a half away. So I set aside one day, and my mother and I went on one here of a road trip. Road-trip! *laughing* Welcome to Farm Land!! *GPS saying directions* Shut up! (to GPS) Some notes on our adventure: I don't know what Mother Nature was on but she was just unleashing her absolute wrath with that blowing snow. Like, I have no idea how we didn't die and become stuck in an ice cube for the rest of eternity. Now this was where things took a little bit of a turn. Originally, my rationale looked a little bit like this: Obviously not all the eggs I buy will hatch. I mean it's me we're talking about here- I'm bound to mess up at least seven times. So I thought, "Okay, I'll buy 4 and if only 1 hatches I'll at the least have 1 to take care of," "and at the most have 4 to take care of" So I arrived at her house- y'know ten dollars in hand... *knock knock knock knock* "Hello." "I would like to buy 4 quail eggs." "Oh! That's great - except that I have a minimum sale quantity of 24." Turned out... I was about to be pregnant... with 24 of the same kid. Okay, so at this point I had the eggs. We drove home. And this happened: Aritzia! Aritzia! Oh my god! ARITZIAAAAAAA!!! Right there! Aritzia! Ohhhh myyy godddddd! You're probably wondering: "Joana, why did you even include that footage? It has nothing to do with the video." Well, where the here do you think I got these pants? So quail eggs take 18 days to hatch. 18 times 24, that's- *Calculating Noises* 392 hours of impatient waiting? Did I get that right? The temperature is supposed to stay at a scorching 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Unfortunately 3 of the eggs just came cracked so I was low-key scammed of 69 cents... I don't have enough money for chicken nuggets. So for the next 13 days I closely monitored the temperature and humidity, if the humidity dipped too low I took a turkey baster and just replaced some of the water. ~On the 4th day of Christmas my true love gave to me~ ~an unwanted quail pregnancy...~ Should've used a condom. I can't- On day 6 I got THIS text from my mom. She called me on the bus freaking out because the humidity had tanked. So we had a screaming session trying to understand each other. AND THEN- Day 14 came along. So this is that moment in all of the earthquake movies when the Richter scale starts going like THIS: You go into lock-down mode. Shut the doors. Close the windows. Put your hazmat suits on. Stop breathing. So you take out the egg-turner, ramp up the humidity to about 70% and you just leave them in the bottom of the incubator while they hatch. And now we don't open it ever again! So for the rest of the 14th day nothing happened. The 15th day came around- also nothing happened and I was starting to lose hope. Then the 16th day came around. ONE OF THEM'S CRACKING I'M GONNA CRY! Oh my god. There's a crack in that one! *Heavy Breathing* AAAAAAAAAA- MY KIDS ARE HATCHING! AAAAA- Another 2 hours went by...and at 2 pm... The eggs started shaking VIOLENTLY Oh my god- *Laughing whilst out of breath* GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO *Watching the eggs hatch in excitement* OH MY GOD- AAA- Holy CRAP oh my god.. And then... This happened... *Excited Yelling* Ah! It's alive! Oh my go- What!? Oh my god! So, the rest of the hatching process goes by pretty quickly. So, listen up. After the first one was wild and free, It only took 30 minutes before another one started to kick opened its shell, butt first. And it wasn't long before he had an audience. Hey, uh, excuse you. Selfish much? Oh my god. Your brother is trying to hatch! Ah... pardon? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!!! Oh, excuse you! Oh my god! AHHHHHHHH- So, after all that business, he took a nap. My dad thought it was dead... but then he started freaking breakdancing all over the incubator so, he bit his tongue. About an hour later, the third one started to pit. But this one ended up taking a long time, so I just decided to let him be. You're gonna be a grandmother! *Laughs* The fourth one started to hatch. It was now 7 pm. Now, this one was out of his shell in a solid 20 minutes... until his ash got stuck. He was born thicc, okay? I don't know what else to tell you. And it was kinda hilarious watching him try to twerk his way out of his shell, to no avail. Actually, uh, I have a bone to pick with my first born. This blonde one, he is extremely violent. Like he was attacking his brothers left and right he's seeing red. Someone calm him down. Anyways, another three hours went by and the second one's butt was still stuck in his shell. Now, I'm gonna make this very clear I would help him hatch out of his shell but literally every single source I read on hatching eggs told me that doing that is nothing short of the cardinal sin. So I just had to sit and wait and eventually he was out and walking around and things were great *Gasp* He's out! He's out! He's out! His butt is out! Agghh- So we left them in the incubator for another 15 hours just to gain some strength. They still had the nutrition of the yolk so they weren't ravenous but after that point we transferred them to the brooder, which is just essentially a heated home for raising baby animals. Now, you can buy one- for three thousand dollars online. Or you can build one by yourself for next to nothing! *Slides Box* Hi. We're gonna build the brooder! I have all of my, uh- trinkets here. I even have a baby monitor, y'know I'm not taking this thing lightly. Like, this is intense *Stabs Lid of Box* I did it! Y'know is it a sin to have kids out of wedlock? Okay, sure, I guess it is. A little something like this- I said a little something like this! What if my quails get the Coronavirus? Here's to making a huge mess on my bedroom floor! *Sniffs Bird Substance* Mhm, Mhm *Chokes* *Puches Bucket* What? So there's breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 'Kay, now for the baby monitor, I got this off of Amazon for $20 and I'm really skeptical that this is gonna work Alexa! Alexa! Alexa! Sabrina? What? Alright yeah, why don't we get this straight? First of all, I'm not a number. I'm a generalist not a specialist, I'm a generalist. *Briefly Singing Lion King Opening* Galileo, Galileo, Galileo! Oooh, I wanna dance with somebody! Ah! My eyes! Ugh. This is ten meters of chicken wire. Oooh, jiggly wiggly wiggly wiggly! *Roars Through Chicken Wire* Okay, I need to stop. Hello my children! Hey there. Hey. OH MY GOD! AHH! Hi, hi, hello, get on my hand, now. AHH- Oh my god, he pooped! okay- Oh god, he's stepping on his poop! Okay, let's go for a ride ladies and gentlemen! So at the end of the day I successfully transferred all the quails to the brooder Y'know. I'd incubated the eggs for 14 days, hatched them, threw them in the brooder. They figured out how to drink pretty quickly, and eating was incredibly fast after that. They were really fluffing up y'know gaining weight, they're super fast too they're like incredibly agile- One of them is still stuck in its shell. Remember that one egg that was like taking a really long time to hatch? Well turned out, he was still stuck in his vessel. Now as I said before, you should never help a chick out of his shell, however this one only had his beak out and he didn't seem to be making any progress in the grand scheme of hatching, so I watched some videos, and got down to business. The emergency c-section was performed at precisely 8PM on March 15th. The patient had prolonged labor and abnormal positioning, so the unqualified doctor used two eyebrow tweezers to break away the shell. This incredibly laborious task was met with some difficulty along the way such as, micromanaging dad, *Everyone Yelling 'No!' at Micromanaging Dad* but in the end, he was out. We put him back in the incubator with a bit of food and water for the next couple of hours just to get some strength. Thankfully the patient made a full recovery. His legs seemed to be working perfectly fine and he was running around for the entire night. So I think now's a good time to name my children... Blondie is Quigley. That one there is Quinton. That's Quincy. That's Kelly. ...with a Q. ...and there, ...that one's Dula Peep. So yeah, That's what I've been doing for the past week. Unfortunately, for the rest of the eggs, uh
none of them hatched. I did crack them open though,
and it turned out that they hadn't even developed into fetuses. So if that makes you feel better, there you go. Needless to say, we buried them in my backyard. Uh, I just hope my house doesn't get haunted with the spirit of unborn baby quails. So yeah. I guess I'm a parent now. I know the world is kind of having a bit of a moment right now, So... I hope everybody stays safe. Wash your hands. Do your due diligence. ...and I'll see you in the next one. Toodles!
