Part 2: Miracle's story

Once I realised the duckling was alive, I think my heart rate went up about 50% higher then normal! I took the egg inside and quickly began to research how to remove a duckling from it's egg safely. The words "Highly Risky" glared up at me, from every page. I didn't know what to do! She seemed to be fairly weak from what I could tell, so leaving her inside wasn't really an option, but if I helped her out I could accidentally kill her too! I was feeling very overwhelmed. The stress of helping this duckling and being on time for camp were starting to give me a headache! But then she peeped at me again.... I had to help her.

I laid her down on a dry cloth on my Mom's bed, and still feeling kind of shaky,began to help her out. This is how you help a duckling hatch.

First make sure the room you are in is nice and warm. You will need...
- a dry cloth
- a jar of warm water
- a dropper
- small tweezers

Lay the egg on the dry cloth with the side that has the peep hole facing you. ( the hole the duckling has started to try and get out of).

With the tweezers, carefully remove the shell around that hole. Do NOT break the membrane. As you go, wet the membrane and keep it moist. That is the key to sucuess. If it dries out it will go as hard as rock. If you wet it too much, the duckling could drown.

Keep going until either the ducking breaks out, or you have removed most of the shell. After most of the shell is removed, keep the membrane moist until the duckling is hatched.

That is what I did! From 3pm to 6pm, I slowly and surely removed the egg shell ( which was not an easy task) By 6pm most of the shell was removed, but she was still making no progress or effort to get out. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I started yelling at her. "Why am I even helping you? You're probably going to die anyway!" All she did was peep at me. I laughed a little bit. Even though she wasn't born yet,she was communicating with me. She was already forming a character out of herself.

My Mom came into the room. "You should probably go to camp now," She exclaimed, " you're already late."

I nodded. She was right. I put the egg in a small box on top of a dry cloth, then brought it into the van, along with some warm water, and the dropper. That became Miracles first car ride, out of many. I figured that if the camp wouldn't let me keep her there, I would just have to tell them I couldn't stay. I had already gone too far to call it quits on this little egg.