It is a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma

I am continuing to analyze the samples from the first trial. Chicken parts ground up in chloroform have a distinctive odor that is a mixture of meat and chloroform, but chicken parts ground up in acid (perchloric acid, to be precise) smell like vomited-up, partially digested chicken. Yum, yum. 

Our second feeding trial started last week. I keep a daily log, doing head counts, checking water and feed levels, room temperature, litter quality. Today, day 9 of the trial, there was a surprise waiting for me.

I really hope that our newest batch of chicks have not developed some mad telekinetic skills. It seems that we had an escapee in the 24 hours since I was last in the barn. One pen had only six chicks in it this morning--it's supposed to have seven! I counted again and again. I counted the chicks on the other side of the partition. Maybe they developed the ability to levitate? Nope, the proper number of chicks was on the other side. I started sifting through the litter drifts--maybe it was dead and the others buried it? (If chickens are developing burial rituals, well, we've got bigger issues than a missing chick.) I found nothing, smelled nothing (dead chicks quickly get pretty stinky since their pens are kept between 80 and 82 degrees).

There are other workers at the farm. I thought that perhaps one of them found a dead chick in that pen but failed to record it. That's sloppy record-keeping but easily corrected. There is usually a 2 to 5 % mortality rate in the first 10 days or so so a chick death isn't unexpected. We've already had one chick die (it was really small, just failed to thrive). There is no internet access out there so I decided to complete my morning rounds and email the farm manager when I got to campus.

Directly across the hall is another room with two more pens on the same diet. In the pen by the door there was EIGHT chicks! I couldn't believe my eyes! I counted them over and over to be sure. I randomly grabbed one and put it in the other pen.

Was one of the student workers yanking my chain? Did a chick slip out of a room before I closed the door yesterday and I didn't notice it? Believe it or not, this is one of the things I check for before I leave every day.

The farm manager has since confirmed that rarely a smaller chick might squeeze under a door but never in her years at the farm has she known one to squeeze under twice.

So basically we are back to telekinesis. We are doomed.

(link to source of post title)