Just when you start feeling like T'Challa the Black Panther, you realize your imaginary Wakanda was not under any threat at all. It was your hysterical self that made it all up. That was the story of my Saturday; this post is about sharing it with you.
It had been a busy week on and off of Steem/it, so I decided to cool off a bit and go see my parents just 30 minutes away. Friday evening I checked in. As habit I had walked around the little home to see how mum's garden and the vegetables were faring, and check on the hen and her chicks -- how many she managed to guard off the preying hawk. Four out of five, from the last I visited. Fair enough.
Every(?) African household has this outdoor kitchen -- detached from the main house -- where there's a tripod burner made from steel or clay, and some firewood and other things that are really not fancy enough to stay in the main house, maybe because it has too much soothe or maybe no one will bother to steal them. This is usually the kitchen the household's hens and their chicks would sleep. Ours is not different. Normally they return when it begins to get dark and snuggle up in a corner there, and go out to hustle for food when it's bright the next day.
Fast forward to Saturday (yesterday) while I was cleaning the yard. I noticed the chicks were wandering on their own without their mother. My mum argued that the hen had separated them, but I insisted they were too young to be left by their mother. I kept close eyes on them for about an hour. When the mother didn't meet up with them, I resorted to get proactive, and suggested to my mom we should make a house for the little chicks, since they can't fend for themselves yet, for long. I think they are about six weeks old. With no mother to fight off the hawk, they would be served as meals in little time. With no mother to split the large food chunks for them, they might starve. My mum agreed it was a great idea.
So off to the figurative drawing board I went.
I figured with my zero carpentry skills I will just make a 4-legged wooden cage with 1/2 inch wire mesh around it, to prevent the chicks from going out, and protect them from external preys. As I had no cutting tools I thought it necessary to have them all cut at the market. That meant I had to be definite on how many of what measurement of wood I needed. You can see that from plan above. With that I was off to the wood market just two miles away. We call those "timber markets" in Nigeria.
And then the nails and the wire mesh at the "building materials" market.
Process
Hey! I am not going to bore you with my jaded step-by-step because building it isn't the point of this post, so I made a timelapse video of the whole process. Enjoy.
Total Amount Spent - NGN 2,500 (~5 STEEM)
Time Spent - 3 hours
Plot Twist
Here's it. Something pretty funny (and annoying even) happened just when I rounded up the construction. This is about 6 in the evening when the avian specie usually return to their little corner in this outdoor kitchen. I hadn't seen the chicks for some hours and I was hoping they will all return on their own that evening so I can have them safely put aside. I mean no one deserves to run after four birds except there is the incentive of eating grilled chicken within a few hours. Oh Christmas!
Well, the chicks all came back... but with their mother. Holy heaven! Why did I go through all that stress? For nothing?
The Lesson
Well I sought a lesson, while I am still trying to figure out what I would do with this tiny little house. Here is the whole essence of this post. FYI, I don't have any regret for spending just 5 STEEM and 2 hours when I have a crib I am proud to look at and beat my chest I built it. Ahaha. Here is the lesson:
I guess I was too apprehensive to have noticed that the little chicks did not look distressed, panicky or anxious while they were not with their mother. They were relaxed and calm, which is why my mum suggested the mum had sent them away voluntarily, even when they were so young. I am not trying to propose a psychology of birds, but I have seen chicks who were left behind by their mother or simply got lost. And non of these four little chicks looked anything like that. Looking at it retrospectively, I can say with certainty they knew their mum was okay and around.
Isn't nature wonderful? Let me add a little story to emphasize my point of this post. Lost-and-now-found mother hen has some stray chicks that only recently began to follow her around, at respectable distance, because their mum is no more. They are not ours, so I don't know what happened to their mother. Two of them. So they follow our mother hen to the kitchen home every night, and in the day around the yard. Every now and then in the night you hear the hen chase them away from her fold whenever the foster chicks go uncomfortably close. You know what amazes me about that? Mother hen rather allows her now-adult hen and cock sleep with her and her chicks. She had separated from these ones many weeks ago and they are on their own, but mother hen has her DNA written on them and she still knows. That too baffles me.
Well, that sums my little post. It's Sunday and while I stay immersed in the wonderment of nature, I am still trying to figure what to do with that little DIY house above. I will welcome any suggestions. Thanks for reading, guys. Cheers and have a great new week ahead. I head to my place today, back to work on- and off-line, and that includes helping 
Cheers!