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We got a new batch of chicks this spring. They were babies at an elementary school and we were the release valve when they aged.

Fuzzy, yellow, small chicks are beyond belief cute. But as soon as they start growing, they immediately turn gawky, squawky, awkward and confused. They become instant teenagers, milling around, in each other’s’ way, smelly, greedy, seedy, argumentative and filthy. They all look the same and act the same, in a panic most of the time.

Except for this one chick. Yes, she looked just like the others, but she was different. She wouldn’t stay down on the floor of their cage. This brave, new bird was seeking a brave new world. She’d flip and flap her nascent wings to mightily scale the heights of their group waterer — a towering vessel in their scrawny little world.

And there she was, that one striving chick trying to look out the window to the world beyond. Life — there it was — right out that window next to their cage. The others didn’t care. They were waiting for food, that’s all. She was waiting for freedom, knowledge, fulfillment. Food, yes, but also something else. Her face was so dedicated to looking out. You could read it in her eye. Some nights, you could look in the window and there she was, eerily illuminated by their red heat lamp bulb that kept the little folks warm at night. She was still up there, peering out, clearly looking for something more to life. Go for it, chick.

Not sure why, but that chicken one plaintive night jarred the thought out of me that even the worst, most suffering moments of life are a glorious heaven compared to death.

It seemed so obvious but there is so much suffering in the world that sometimes one must wonder how some people go on. But even in that suffering, it always beats the alternative.

Pain and adversity is a mountain — a mountain range often — but one has to climb on, as that chick did. It was like Calcutta-crowded in that cage as they grew, but soon they graduated to the freedom of a real outside chicken house. What was the first thing that visionary chick did in her new home? Jumped up on her new taller waterer, gazed all around her, gauging the scene and then hopped down to go exploring. The other seven stayed bunched in a heap, cowering in the shadows, even the roosters among them. Not everyone is born to lead.

But sometimes a bird can have just a little too much freedom.

Earlier this summer, we were having an epidemic of free-flying birds crashing into the glass window and sliding door that faced south. Sadly, they would bop and drop. Or crash and splash, right into a dog-watering concrete clam below. Sometimes, they would come-to and fly or wobble away, but often they didn’t. They would come from the south and as they looked toward that sunroom window, they would see only the reflected blue sky. They never knew what hit them or what they hit.

Too much freedom. We put strips of blue warning tape across the windows and the window bombing stopped. We look like a condemned tenement with the tape. It’s been that kind of summer.

In the meantime, an old, trusted hen finally pooped out and exited the scene with no notification. She had done her time, laid her eggs and endured the lurid attentions of the rooster long enough. Near the end, she had been waiting right inside the chickens’ door every day, just for some space of her own. She got her own individualized feeding and she let me pat her head and stroke her feathers while eating.

These are both signs, I‘ve learned, of life-ending behaviors. But she appreciated it. I think. When you gotta go, you gotta go, I guess.

The point of all this fowl conjecture? It’s never too late to be that baby chick up on the waterer. Keep exploring the big world around you and let the eggshells fall where they may.

Chickens will come and go — we’ve learned that over 40 years of livestock. But even the worst, sickest, most painful day for them, for you or for me is still a treasure from up above.

Some people might doubt that. Some chickens, too. But there’s a view from atop of that waterer that’s still there for the seeing and, if you’ve got the strength, the exploring.

Turn off the bad news; TV thrives on. Put down that phone and don’t give up the fight. It’s still worth the battle, now more than ever.

Gloucester resident Gordon Baird is an actor and musician, co-founder of Musician magazine and producer of “The Chicken Shack” community access TV show.

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