‘I’ll call her Daisy,’ Silky Josephine says. ‘That’s a good yellow name. Like Sunshine, only a flower.’ 
     While Josie was able to sniff the eggs we put into our incubator, and before they hatched, determine whether they would be a boy or girl, so that she could name them properly, she was unable to sniff through the shell what color the chicks would be. 
     I had told her that they all should be black, as they were Plymouth Barred Rock chickens, and that eventually, their fluff would be replaced with gray and white speckled feathers. 
     I was right about seven of the eight that hatched. But one, the eighth, was yellow. A little girl. Bright and buttery. 
     While she was still an egg, Silky had named the chick Gretchen, as it sounded to her like a good, gray name. There was an Ashley too, a Pepper, and of course, a little rooster she named Foghorn. But seeing the little chick now, hatched out and yellow as a sunbeam, Silky just didn’t think Gretchen fit. 
     ‘She’s a Comet, Josephine,’ I told her of the chick, thinking it best to throw a small wrench into the naming process now in hopes of avoiding a much larger explanation later. ‘She’s not going to be yellow forever.’ 
     ‘A Comet?’ Silky says, her eyes widening with the sound of it. ‘What color will she be?’ 
     ‘Kind of red. Kind of orange,’ I tell her. 'Like a comet, I suppose.'
     Silky stared for a moment at the little chick. She pressed her nose against its fluff and took in a deep breath of its scent. 
    ‘I think when she’s a Comet on the outside,’ Silky Josephine said finally, ‘she’ll still be Daisy enough on the inside.’ 
     And so it was, that with a sniff, the egg named Gretchen became our little Comet, named Daisy.