He went into the loft and busied himself cleaning out the nest boxes. One wall of the coop was lined with orange-crates, with each pair of birds occupying one compartment. Terry liked to watch the mates building their nests from the clean straw and he enjoyed the regular way the cocks and hens took turns sitting on the two small white eggs, the males by day, the females by night, in well-regulated shifts. He liked to watch the growth of the grotesque, featherless, Durante-beaked, one-day-old squabs into plump, fluttery, thirty-day-old adolescents ready to leave the nest. Boy, how they hated to get their fannies out of that nest! They were squawkingly scared of the big, open world beyond their nest box and they hung on for dear life when their old man and old lady tried to push them out over the edge. It used to make Terry laugh and feel sorta sad at the same time—all that flapping of wings and squealing commotion. Then the full-grown rejected squabs, big enough to fly, but still too dumb to know they had it in them, would flop heavily to the floor of the loft.
