I really know better than letting 2.5-week-old chicks out of their brooder on a rainy day. But our Red Rangers are so industrious, and they run back into the brooder every night on their own, so I figured they were smart enough to come in out of the rain.

Wrong! Instead, when drops started to fall, the chicks holed up underneath the brooder. That worked okay until water started splashing in and the fluffballs got chilled. At which point I rushed out in the wet to try to herd them up into the dry.

This operation would have gone more smoothly had Mark been home. But he was away at school, which reduces my chicken-herding abilities by about 1,000%.

So I chased the boys out from under the brooder...and they took cover beneath a bush. Then I chased them away from the bush, at which point half ran up the ramp and the other half ran back under the brooder. In the end, I was stuck capturing the less domesticated chicks one by one on my hands and knees on the wet grass.

Looking at this after picture, I realize that the chicks really weren't all that damp anyway. And since the rain stopped an hour later, I might have gotten away with leaving them alone.

Instead, I'm the one who got soaked to the bone. Good thing my thermoregulation skills are vastly superior to those of half-feathered chicks, so we all dried off with no ill effects.