Hook
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I almost had to drill a hole in the side of this hen! The ceramic one with six birdies trapped inside. I realized she was kind of heavy and worried the vent I had poked through her mouth had closed up as she dried. When I checked with the same curved pin that made the hole, it got stuck halfway down. I want the babies to be able to breathe and for this piece to dry fully and soon, so I grabbed the power drill and tried adding the tiniest drill bits because drilling into dry clay is super risky. The clay is very brittle and can crack easily because it's basically compressed dust at this point. These tiny drill bits were too small for the drill, so I found a bigger one that worked, but before totally giving up and drilling a hole into the mama hen, I decided to try opening the mouth one last time. This time with a beading needle, which I wasn't sure if it would be strong enough. As I was poking the needle in, I heard a pop and the needle went all the way through and reopened the vent. Hopefully the birdies inside were not too bothered by this intrusion. I'm so happy I didn't have to drill a hole in the side of the poor mother hen. If you're wondering why I wouldn't drill a hole in the bottom of the hen, there's two reasons. One, because this would require tipping the hen sideways, making the bone dry baby birds roll around and break, And because I would rather make the vent somewhere I could cover with bisque fix, colored underglaze and glaze like I did with this other maraca hen, so it would be completely hidden in the end result. A hole in the bottom would be harder to cover up and fix with that method. For example, because you can't add glaze to the bottom of ceramics, or it'll stick to the kiln shelves. Now she's going back on the shelf to finish drying and wait to be bisque fired.