Are You Ready to Hatch an Unusual Chicken?: List 2

by Kelly Jones
In this sequel to Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, the new owner of Redwood Farm, twelve-year-old Sophia Mariposa Brown, awards certificates to her special flock, but she still must pass an official inspection.

This list covers pages 80–227 of the 2019 Yearling edition.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3
30 words 24 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. pantry
    a small storeroom for storing food or beverages
    And you have a whole pantry of food at your other house that needs to be used before it goes bad.
  2. bale
    make into a large bundle bound for storage or transport
    “A tractor, or sheep, or maybe goats. Or a riding mower—I bet her front field is pretty flat. Do you just need to cut the grass, or do you need it baled?”
    I shrugged. I didn’t know what baled even was.
  3. rickety
    inclined to shake as from weakness or defect
    He put a big bowl of red beans and rice with a spoon sticking out of it on a not-too- rickety table, and headed off toward the sound of sawing.
  4. specifically
    in distinction from others
    Not like he was calling me out for talking, or even asking us specifically. Just like he wondered if anyone needed a pencil.
  5. assume
    take to be the case or to be true
    People always assume I can’t speak English, and I don’t like it.
  6. intrigue
    cause to be interested or curious
    Clara looked kind of annoyed, but maybe a little intrigued too.
  7. necessarily
    as a highly likely consequence
    But she also told me we’d have individual projects to work on, and that just because they’d learned about eggs didn’t mean kids here had necessarily hatched their own chicks.
  8. ceramic
    an artifact made of clay baked at a high temperature
    But there’s only a few more weeks of music, and then it’s dance and watercolor and theater and maybe ceramics, if they can find someone who can fix the kiln in time.
  9. kiln
    a furnace for firing, burning, or drying porcelain or bricks
    But there’s only a few more weeks of music, and then it’s dance and watercolor and theater and maybe ceramics, if they can find someone who can fix the kiln in time.
  10. statistics
    a branch of mathematics concerned with quantitative data
    Today she came home in tears, and after some hugs and tissues and talking to Mom for a while, she’s decided she’s going to take statistics next quarter, and instead she’s going to switch to a business class, with some math but also some business stuff.
  11. fluent
    expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively
    I told her my dad says Spanish still makes his brain tired, even though he’s pretty fluent, because he didn’t grow up speaking it, like me and Mom, and he still has to think about what the words mean all the time.
  12. projectile
    impelling or impelled forward
    Llama spit isn’t really just spit—it’s more like projectile vomit, Sam says.
  13. former
    belonging to some prior time
    Lupe came home from college today all excited because when she told her business class about our work-party picnic, her professor recognized Redwood Farm and said she had a former student who had done a project on it.
  14. occasionally
    now and then or here and there
    Whatever happens, don’t try to help chicks hatch. The chick’s body is still adapting to its final, outside form, and if it comes out before it’s ready, it could bleed to death. The chicks know what they’re doing, even if they need to stop and take breaks occasionally.
  15. consult
    have a conference in order to talk something over
    If you’re really worried about one, ask a local poultry person to consult with you before you do anything.
  16. bedraggled
    limp, untidy, and soiled
    We saw the chick inside, but it didn’t look like a chicken at all. It looked like it had long wet hair, like a bedraggled tiny fluffy dog that was going bald, so you could see the pink skin underneath.
  17. flail
    thrash about
    Then the first chick started flailing its wing around, and knocked itself over, and the shell started to break in half a little wider.
  18. overwhelming
    very intense
    Little bits of shell were getting everywhere, and all that loud peeping was kind of overwhelming too.
  19. contaminate
    make impure
    Keep it out of the incubator so it doesn’t go bad and explode, contaminating the others.
  20. perch
    a branch or rod that serves as a resting place
    “Terminator is getting kind of old, and I think she’s having trouble jumping up to the high perch. I don’t want her to have to sleep on the coop floor.”
  21. mellow
    having attained gentleness through age and experience
    For such a mellow chicken, Buffy is really loud.
  22. practically
    almost; nearly
    Speckles and Freckles had dust baths. They’ve dug such a big hole, they practically disappear in it when they roll around.
  23. commute
    a regular journey to and from your place of work
    Chris’s mom has her hands full too, and Sam’s parents have a long commute, so they couldn’t take a break and come over either.
  24. molt
    cast off hair, skin, horn, or feathers
    He said he thought Roadrunner was probably fine, just molting.
  25. apparently
    seemingly; as far as one can tell
    Apparently it’s normal for chickens to lose a whole lot of their feathers in summer or fall.
  26. thermal
    caused by or designed to retain heat
    Today was my lucky day, because it turned out Gregory was due for a fifteen-minute break right then anyway, so he brought his thermal mug of coffee back to take a look at my chickens.
  27. chapter
    a local branch of some fraternity or association
    “I don’t think she steals everyone’s chickens. Just mine, because they’re from Redwood Farm. Ms. Griegson has a lot of friends here. She’s the head of the Poultry Association chapter and is a 4-H leader and runs the poultry show and everything,” I told Lupe.
  28. dignified
    formal or stately in bearing or appearance
    Lupe had just pointed out her favorite horse to me, the one with lots of colors that likes to race around the field almost as fast as Roadrunner. It was rolling around in the dirt. (I always think of horses as being dignified and majestic and expensive-looking, but this one looked ridiculous right then!)
  29. majestic
    having or displaying great dignity or nobility
    Lupe had just pointed out her favorite horse to me, the one with lots of colors that likes to race around the field almost as fast as Roadrunner. It was rolling around in the dirt. (I always think of horses as being dignified and majestic and expensive-looking, but this one looked ridiculous right then!)
  30. spigot
    a regulator for controlling the flow of a liquid
    I turned the knob on the spigot, and took the waterer that Lupe handed me.
Created on Sat Mar 18 13:47:36 EDT 2023 (updated Wed Apr 05 16:33:29 EDT 2023)

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