Carriers of Life---Literally

Monday afternoon Meadow got off her nest and did not get back on it. Tuesday at noon Nate and I went down to the pond, Nate got in a canoe and paddled out to the nest to retrieve the eggs. There were 15 (Muscovy's are known for regularly hatching 14-20 eggs at a time:) very cold eggs. I candled them and found about half of them had pipped internally (broken through the inner membrane into the air cell in preparation for hatching) and all were definitely dead. No movement whatsoever.

We prayed over them and spoke life into them. I put the internally pipped ones in the incubator which was already running with a few little chicken eggs in it and the rest I put near the wood stove. We continued to speak life to them and pray over them throughout the day. At one point Joshua was to be found with his nose pressed against the incubator saying loudly, "Come back to life duckies! Come back." Still no signs of life. The eggs were thoroughly warm and had been so for several hours and no movement or noise from them.

In the middle of the night I woke up to find Nate peering in the bedroom door, as soon as my eyes cracked open he beckoned cheerfully. I came out and he was talking to the eggs. I thought he was just being encouraging but after a moment he turned to me and said "Have you heard them?" I stared at him for a moment and he grinned bigger. After a few minutes though I was sure he had imagined it because we didn't hear anything more.

Then it came, a thin little peeping from one of the eggs. We got a flashlight and checked them all. One of the eggs contained a living, squirming, peeping duckling getting ready to hatch!! No signs of life all day, then suddenly Life! :) Our little miracle duckling in working on hatching today, we can't wait to meet him...

And, just incidentally, the duckling that came back to life was the one right in front of Joshua's mouth when he was speaking to them the day before.