Day 287:
Not much going on today. Digging.
Looking back through my notes it doesn’t look like I’ve talked about the duckens’ hatching problems.
Or rather the weirdness of them.
See, all the animals here — except me, obviously — mate as soon as you feed them. What they eat seems to vary by species. The cows prefer hay, the duckens prefer wheat seed, and the pigs seem fond of potatoes or carrots.
And as I’ve mentioned there’s some kind of weird time compression. Or weird biology. Because within seconds of eating and then mating, they give birth to one and exactly one baby, alive, small, but fully formed. None of this eyes-closed-for-the-first-two-weeks nonsense for them!
So, that’s a thing, and it applies even to the duckens.
Except, well, the duckens lay a lot of eggs. So many that I trip on them regularly. (I mean, there are some places in my compound now that probably have a few hundred duckens in a room. Being frustrated at them, I threw one the other day… and out popped a baby ducken. Fully formed, and just as healthy as if they had been “born” the “natural” way.
So I’ve made it a habit to throw extra eggs. If they hatch, more duckens. If they don’t hatch, they don’t even leave a mess on the walls, which puzzles the heck out of me. Because if I crack one on the side of a bowl, I definitely get egg.
Honestly, I need an engineer, a biologist, and a physicist on this compulsory trip so badly.