Since March it has been believed that my daughter Hannah Belle might kid at any moment. She looks like one of those trucks going down the highway with half of someone’s house on it and an advance car (usually in the form of her chuckleheaded sidekick Miss Melly) leading the way.
Hannah Belle herself has remained calm and not tipped her hand about her plans, enjoying several pre-birthing spa treatments without ever actually having to do any birthing, which can be tiring.
In any case, she was on the chart with a date of June 5 pencilled in, since that was 5 months from the date of her last (of many) breedings.
When people would come over they would say, “oh, Hannah Belle Lecter must be having her babies soon.”
“Yes,” the farmer would say, “possibly.”
“She doesn’t look like she can go much longer.”
“No, not really,” the farmer would say.
And then a day and a week and a month would pass, with Hannah Belle getting larger and no kids appearing. Now it is mid-May, and it appears, like Rachel Alexandra, that she may actually go the distance.
If anything, she is starting to look a little smaller, which is one of the strange things that sometimes happens with Hannah Belle, who almost always has a set of beautiful triplets, except for one time when she had a set of beautiful twins. We have only ever had two sets of quadruplets born here, so we doubt she will have more than three.
We doubt it. We really doubt it. Sort of.
Because when it comes to Hannah Belle, I am proud to say that it pays to expect the unexpected. Or, to quote the famous philosopher Jackson Browne, “don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet.”
