My second-grader came bursting into the house this afternoon yelling, “You’ve got to see this!” I’ve heard that phrase enough to know not to proceed innocently with visions of newly blooming flowers. When I saw him crouched over a mass on the front walkway, I steeled myself. I love nature. And you probably do, too, but if you’re squeamish, skip the rest of this blog.

A few steps from him I said with some relief, “Oh, it’s just a slug.”

“No, Mom!” he shouted.

I got closer. It sure looked like a slug. It was shaped like a slug and it was moving just like a slug. Then again, it sort of shimmered. This was one weird slug.

“It’s not a slug!” he said, still crouching. “And look! There’s more!” Sure enough, there were several of these slugs moving across the path and through the grass. Slugs come out in the sort of rainy, still, hot day that we were having. But I’d never seen this many. I got closer. I squatted next to my son. And then I realized he was right. What looked like a slug were hundreds of insects moving in concert like a slug. They were translucent. You could see their intestinal tracts. Sort of like caterpillars made from jellyfish bodies in slug camouflage. Gross is too mild a word. My first reaction? “Let’s feed them to the chickens!”

My husband, who at this point was busy videotaping and photographing this natural wonder, said, “I don’t think they’ll eat them.” (Ask me some other time about how our family photo albums are interspersed with pictures of frogs, snakes and insects.)

“Sure the chickens will eat these things. They don’t eat tent caterpillars – too hairy — but they’ll love these. All smooth and wriggly.” I scooped up one of the “slugs” with a garden trowel and called, “I’ve got bugs for you girls.” They came running. But when I tossed the mass of insects into their yard, they were suspicious. Twinkydink eyed the wriggling bugs. Ginger stretched her neck down and peered at them. Tweedledum, who has a hard time seeing anything through all of her fluffy feathers, came trotting over. She saw movement. She pecked. She swallowed. The hens watched her. Then they all dug in. I tossed them several more trowels of “slugs.” They chuck-chucked and clucked in the singsong way of a contented flock.

Meanwhile, my husband called the guy who installed most of our landscape. Were these bizarre insects going to destroy the garden? We got out our favorite guide to bugs -“Garden Insects of North America” (invaluable!). There they were, on page 520. March Flies. March flies, it turns out, are common and not destructive. They eat decaying matter and sometimes feed on turf grass roots. We’ve never used pesticides on our property and I was relieved that I didn’t have to start. Then again, I wasn’t at all sorry to feed some of them to the hens.

It’s in the high eighties today and humid so the girls are in the shade. The bossy ones have settled into the prime real estate of the loose cool dirt near the compost pile. But there’s not enough room there for everyone, so a few others are off to the side of the chicken house where it is shady and breezy. Still, chickens are restless and easily distractible creatures, so if you watch long enough you’ll see a hen or two wander by. And if you see them all suddenly come charging into view, it’s likely that I’ve just opened the back porch door. They’re optimistic. I might be coming out to feed them.

Even with the window open, the chicken house is a few degrees hotter inside than out. Three hens have been broody lately – Tweedledum, Snowball and Blackie. But on a sweltering day like today it’s only Snowball who has the willpower to stay indoors.

Snowball rasps a guttural warning when I go into the henhouse to check for eggs. Snowball sounds serious, but I can reach under her and collect the eggs without getting pecked at.

Tweedledum, the sweet and dim hen that she is, doesn’t even make a sound. She lets me lift her up and take away the eggs. Then she settles back down as if those three big eggs are still there.

Blackie has been broody for the last few days. She’s a big hen, with big feet and when I reach under her, sometimes I grab a toe by mistake. She fluffs her feathers in annoyance but neither utters a sound nor tries to stop me. Honestly, the eggs must be quite uncomfortable to sit on, so maybe the hens are relieved that they’re gone.

As many of you have written to tell me, (keep the emails coming!), watching the chickens via the Hencam is a lot of fun. It connects some of you to a childhood spent on a farm; for others, toiling away in a cubicle with nary a window, it provide a view into a delightful outside world. Some Hencam addicts are college students who find the girls bizarre and amusing.

Believe it or not, ten years ago, when we first got chickens, my husband said, “you know, I could hook a Web cam up to the henhouse.” At the time, we didn’t have electricity to the barn and it would have been a huge and expensive project. Our new barn has electricity, but it was still a huge and expensive project — we installed very good cameras and linking it all to our server, etc. wasn’t easy. And then there was the Web design… But it’s all been worth it. Today I watched the indoor Web cam right when Blackie was trying to crowd Snowball out of a nesting box. It was a match between Stubborn vs. Immobile.

Mine is not the only hencam. At least a dozen other people around the world have had the same idea. Our set-ups differ, but the purpose remains the same — sheer fun. The best listing of hencams is on a German Web site. Go see!

Hens bred for commercial egg production care little for the eggs that they lay. About once a day they feel this need to settle into the nest. Within a few minutes, the hen lays her egg, clucks proudly and then quickly forgets about the event and goes outside to find something interesting to peck at. This is a good thing if you care about getting eggs from your hens. Most of our hens are very good layers.

But there’s always the exception. A hen that stops laying and sits on a clutch of eggs day in and day out is called “broody.” Some breeds, like Silkies, are known for being broody and good mothers (if only I was considered a good mom when I get broody!) Tweedledum, our Silkie, went broody this spring. She sat on the other hens’ eggs that in total weighed as much as her. Of course, without a rooster, the eggs were infertile. That didn’t seem to bother Tweedledum at all. After three weeks of staying indoors all day (except for the daily dust bath – never to be missed) she left the nesting box and no longer has any interest in the eggs.

Now Snowball is broody. The books give all sort of tips for how to get a hen to stop sitting and start laying. But since Snowball rarely lays an egg anyway, it doesn’t bother me that she’s unproductive. I am sympathetic to farmers who have to make a living. Snowball would have no place on a real farm. But she’ll always have a place here.

I love gardening – the scents, the feel of rich loam between fingers and the glorious colors. But there are a few things I don’t like and most of them have to do with bugs. Sure, dragonflies are lovely and who doesn’t like it when a ladybug is on one’s sleeve? But there are many annoying, painful and destructive bugs. Some of the worst are grubs. It is yucky (and yes, I carefully chose that word) to dig down into the veg bed and come up with vile squirming pasty-white grubs.

Chickens, on the other hand, long for grubs the way that I yearn for the chocolate that I recently had in France. Luckily for the chickens, grubs are easier to come by than those dark chocolate truffles. It is funny how their love of grubs has changed my gardening experience. Where once I would hastily drop the grubs into a jar to be disposed of later, now when I find a grub, I cheerfully call, “Who wants a bug?” The girls come running to the fence and I toss it to them. What ensues is a rather unruly scrimmage for the treat. The grubs make them so happy that I actually look forward to finding grubs. I even dig a little extra to look for them! Yesterday, planting leeks, I found only three grubs. The girls were disappointed. And so was I.