May. Day 22. The chick had woken up to be alive and when they came in they could hear the it cheeping faintly inside the egg. They held the egg, passing it from hand to hand and felt the ticklish vibration of something inside tap-tapping against the shell. They put the egg back in the incubator so it would stay warm but nobody wanted to do their writing in case they missed something.

After a while they could see a tiny hole with some sticky stuff around the edges and a crack. You could see the egg-tooth on the chick’s beak, he said, and by middle of the morning the hole was quite big and the cheeping was much louder. They sat in a tight circle round the incubator and ate their sandwiches and apples and kept on watching it. The little bits of broken eggshell around the hole were all stuck together. It was trying so hard to get out and they wanted to help it but the teacher said no, it would do just fine on its own and right then a wet looking head emerged and the rest of the egg broke in half. The chick fell over. It stood up and fell over several times. It had big feet and it was not at all fluffy but very slimy, its feathers all stuck together with egg yolk. It really had come out of the egg; it took all morning and they saw it - and this was the best day in his life so far, he said, even better than his birthday -