The Incredible Egg

Rita arrived here being a bit of an egg thief. The hens in our main coop got to pecking holes in eggs so I would get them out of there as soon as possible. There are a couple of lawn chairs near the coop and when Rita first arrived, it was cooler and I would put the eggs in the chair and in the evening I would go around with my basket and pick up those eggs, then make my way to the other coops to gather eggs.

I began noticing . . hey . . I thought I had 6 eggs in that chair and now there are 5. Rita was running loose a lot then and one day Vince drove up from work, she was way away from the coop but she made a beeline for the chair, grabbed an egg and ran to Vince with it. We decided someone had played ball with her so we got her a ball and would throw it and she would run get it and sometimes bring it back to us but since she’s no longer running loose outside, we haven’t been playing ball with her.

I give away a lot of my eggs but any that look weird, I keep for us. These are two bantam eggs and the one on the left is longer than normal, which could mean a double yolk so I set it aside on the bar yesterday as I was sorting the eggs.

Eggs

A friend had brought by some egg cartons yesterday and they were sitting on the floor underneath where I was working at the bar. I filled 3 cartons with eggs and went to take them to the fridge in the shop. As I picked up the cartons, I heard something fall but didn’t see what it was or where it went.

Later last night when I went to pick Rita up to take her out, there in her little “nest” on the sofa (Vince rolls up an old blanket kinda like a donut and she loves to curl up in the “hole” in the middle so it does look like a nest) . . there in her nest was an egg!  I said “Rita . . is that an egg in your nest?”

I’m guessing that what I heard fall was that egg because the bar is way too tall for her to get up there. The egg must have fallen into that stack of styrofoam cartons which cushioned its fall and then she found it and grabbed it. How she managed to jump up on the sofa with it without breaking it, I’ll never know but I’m glad I found it before it got broken in the living room, or before it rolled between the cushions or something and rotted!