"Meet Cassiopeia. This one-day-old silkie came to us from an egg in an abandoned clutch of a friend of mine. The hen that had been sitting on them gave up, and the eggs got cold. When my friend was moving the eggs to discard them, she heard peeping coming from inside one! Her incubator was not up to temp or humidity, so she called and asked if I had a broody hen for a chick who had started to hatch. I did, and transported her with a heatpack on a dark and starry night; hence, the name.

Cass spent the next day hatching, and at first her new mother seemed to be a good fit. I checked on them obsessively, but twice found her out from under the hen, cold and near death. A baby chick at this age needs to be at 95 degrees, which it is under a mama. Last night, as I checked, the chick had dried and fluffed, and was tucked with her future chick-siblings, under Adam Levine, our buff silkie mama sitting on four fertile eggs.

But when I hurried out this morning, I found a lifeless white fluff in the far corner of the mama's nesting box, and the Adam Levine up and pacing, stepping on Cass as though she didn't exist.

I called it a fail and sadly picked up the stiff, cold body to dispose of it. Her death eyelids were up, one of her legs looked mangled and broken.

And then, she opened and closed her beak. Once. I was sure I was watching her last breath. But she did it a second time.

I tucked her in my shirt and rushed inside, put on a heat lamp, and held her under it, giving her pipette drops of water. Miraculously, as I kept expecting her to die, she perked up by increments throughout the morning.

Twice abandoned by chicken mamas, she's going to be raised indoors, under a heat lamp and the protective, cat-warding vigilance of my husband's Nana, who hasn't left her yet and reports from the sunny corner of the kitchen that she is now up and walking (hobbling--her leg may still be broken) drinking and eating from the tiny dishes.

Welcome to the world, Cass. We hope you like it here."