I grew up on a farm. We didn’t raise crops, but we did raise a lot of animals. Horses and dogs and cats, always. Sometimes fish and pigs and chickens and baby calves. My brother was known to bring home box turtles and snakes, too. Once I even had birds—a pair of finches—but they died, leaving a nest of unhatched eggs that I kept in my room for months, just in case. That’s me, the eternal optimist. I’m not sure what I would have done if they had miraculously hatched; I’m prett