This advertisement appeared in the newspaper the other day, announcing the arrival of the chicks at the local hardware and-all-around-stuff-you-need L&M store.

I worked on a chicken farm, so I don't care too much for adult chickens. But I think chicks are pretty irresistible, and I'm not the only person who feels this way. When the chicks arrive, folks up here stand in the aisles at L&M, gazing down at the galvanized tubs of babies. Our faces go soft, and we all just stop for a while to watch chicks pick at food, sip water and sleep in a pile with brothers and sisters.

There are signs posted warning everyone not to pick up the chicks, but let me just say that the signs aren't just directed at kids.

The store offers a wide variety of chicks for sale, including Rhode Island reds like the ones in this picture. I took this photo when I worked at the local paper and wrote a story about how the chicks aren't meant to be Easter pets.

You can also buy goslings, turkeys, ducklings and baby pheasants at the store. I know for a fact that the mallard ducks you can buy are only supposed to be used for eating — you aren't supposed to release them into the wild. I had a long talk with a DNR (Department of Natural Resources) officer about that.

If you want to see more photos of different breeds of chickens, game birds and other birds, you can go to the Cackle Hatchery website. When I was poking around the site, I saw that they have a rule about minimum orders on some of their pages:  "A minimum order of fifteen babys chicks (15) is necessary for warmth purposes."

If you want to read an odd and wonderful young adult novel from 1969 about fancy chickens, find a copy of Robert McKay's Dave's Song. The jacket copy reads, "Dave Burdick was a loner, a mystery to his classmates and his teachers, involved in his own word of breeding birds, working on the Burdick poultry farm, and absorbing the works of Lorenz and Ardrey...." 

If that isn't enough to convince you to look at the book, I can also tell you the book features an ex-convict and excerpts of Leonard Cohen's music, which to me spell out all the elements of a successful book.