Surprise

Whippoorwills and owls are now calling at night, and occasionally in daylight I inspect the bluebird box to make sure all is well (and that snakes and bats haven't invaded it). Removing the nest, I noticed with approval that it was lined with extra white fluff, unusual considering that bluebirds have no white feathers, and I was not expecting, at that moment, to see eggs in the nest, but I did. And was very surprised.

A bird that wasn't a bluebird, more like a chickadee, shot out from the box as I approached, and the rust-spotted ones must be her eggs; they match with other photos of chickadee eggs. Apparently the bluebird couple was evicted after producing one egg, and now their blue egg shares the nest with the other, smaller, spotted eggs. Never seen this before. Put it all back as it was. After the chickadees are hatched and raised I can clean out the box so the bluebirds will return and breed there.

We Want Chickens

In the meadow is a remnant of some wooden structure and a rusted wire fence. For 15 years I've imagined it was once a chicken coop. I'd love chickens. A coop, a fence, and some chickens--February is buy-your-chicks time--and my neighbor and I would have lovely fresh eggs from beautiful glossy chickens (I want guinea hens, too, and those gorgeous Polish chickens with plumes that cover their eyes so they can't see) and intense, devoted relationships with each chicken, including the rooster, who'd never chase or bite, and whose voice in the morning I love.

Coop: Easy. Buy it. (Worry later about cleaning and heating it.)

Fence: Not so easy. Friend of mine lost chickens every night until he cut a door into an oil drum where they slept, and even so kept a firearm handy and ran outside barefoot and buck-naked to defend his chickens when he had to. Mine would need ample space enclosed on all sides including the top: raccoon-proof, hawk-proof, coyote- and fox-proof, deer-proof, dog-and-cat-proof, and thief-proof. (Demetrius said, "Everything loves to eat chicken.") Somehow fix it so moles, voles, dogs and prairie dogs can't tunnel in. Failure would mean the trauma and gore of a chicken massacre and I could probably survive, emotionally, only one such event.

Chickens: Easy; buy them. Some of each kind. Maybe buy them mail-order, and get chickens in the mail! (Worry later about mites, diseases, hen-pecking, worms, lice, and weather extremes.) But I vow I will have my own chickens someday.

The Mysterious Number Twelve

I'd like to roll on the floor ecstatic every time I receive from Terri's son Patrick a dozen fresh eggs, pastel-pated and stamped with their dates--these from early December--and part of the thrill is the fact of the dozen. In a base-10 culture like ours, why do eggs come in dozens? Why are there 12 hours on the clock? Remember learning to tell time, how intricate it was? Why 12 months in a year? 12 Apostles? 12 inches in a foot?

It turns out 12 is a special number, long ago agreed to be more versatile than 10. Ten can be neatly divided only by five or two; 12 can be divided by six, three, two, three, or four, for maximum possibilities when packaging, shipping, and retailing, and seating friends at table. The concept of "a dozen" (the word is from Old French dozain, from the Latin duodecim "twelve" from duo, "two" plus decem, "ten") is thus far older than its name, which appears in French around 1300. A dozen is brilliant for eggs. Ten wouldn't seem like enough, and 14 would be too many.

What, am I hard up for thrills this winter that a dozen eggs will thrill me? No! Nothing is prettier than a fresh egg except 12 fresh eggs, beautifully and naturally tinted and cradled like gems. Happy Eastern Orthodox Christmas today. I was raised Eastern Orthodox. The calendar we use diverges from the standard Gregorian calendar by 13 days. Thirteen is another whole story.

Meet Farmer Bob

He'd just got there and parked, because his truck bed was full of dozens of eggs, in miscellaneous cartons. (Who decided eggs should be sold by the dozen? It's the perfect number: a brilliant, immortal idea.)
I screeched the car to a halt. The brown-egg man on the side of the highway again!

This time approaching him I did better. He said, "Hello, young lady." (Always the salesman.) I smiled and said hello, and we exchanged how'er you, good morning, i'n'it a pretty spring day, and shook hands. He held my hand in his own cold hard hand and looked me square in the face. He said, "I've seen you before." I said yes. (My rare and elegant Turkish nose is unforgettable.) He got around to asking me how many dozen eggs I wanted.

"Just one," I said.
"Just one?" (Always the salesman. He isn't standing on the road shoulder for his health.)
"I only need one. There's only me," I said.
"Only you? You mean a lovely young lady like yourself i'nt married?" (Always the salesman.) "Why is that?"
Keeping things simple, I said, "He died."
"Sorry to hear that. There's only one place to take those kind of troubles," he said, "and that's to the Lord." He said more and I just said, "You gotta have faith." It's a sentiment that nobody in Missouri objects to. (I've discovered only one other such statement: "Freedom isn't free." When I wear my "Freedom Isn't Free" t-shirt, people from all walks of life, in the bank, the drugstore, the street, read it and say, "Damn right," or "That's a fact.")

I thought about the friend I was on my way to visit and said, "Better make it two dozen; I know someone who'd like some fresh brown eggs."

He said they'd been laid just yesterday and crowed, "Any fresher and you'd have to be standing in the henhouse."

It took a long time for him to count out change in dollars and fives worn thin as toilet paper. "Can't see without my glasses," he explained. I asked his name. It's Bob something (a truck was roaring by and I couldn't hear the last name.) I asked if I could take his picture because I knew you'd like to see it. He's holding a carton of eggs he's bagged for me. He promised in the summer he'd bring his truck back full of homegrown tomatoes, pickles and more eggs.

Brown Eggs with Value Added

Saw this pickup today where Bald Pate Road meets the highway. Never saw it before. Turned around, pulled over and trotted up saying, “How much for brown eggs?”

The tall thin older man, wearing flannel and a farm cap (more squarish than a ball cap), extended a very dry, cold and toughened hand. “H'are you today?” he asked. (In the country you don’t run up and demand to do business right away. You greet the person. You look into their eyes and get to know them. And you give value-added. City habits still plague me.)

I said, “Your hens laying already?” (I know they start laying in earnest very early in the year.)

“Mine do year round,” he said. “These eggs yesterday morning and the day before. Three dollars for one dozen.” His egg cartons were a miscellany from all sorts of places and there weren’t many left. He opened a carton and showed me the eggs. I wanted only one carton. But I got my value-added. “What you do with these,” said the farmer, holding the carton and demonstrating, “is turn ‘em upside down and leave ‘em that way every seven days, if you remember to do it, and the eggs stay fresh for 30 days same as now.”

“I never heard that,” I said, appreciatively.

 “I grew up on a farm,” he said, “and my mother and me went to seminars, and if you listen,” he said, tapping an ear, “you learn somethin. Don’t hard-boil these. You’ll never get the shell off.” (That’s true when an egg is too fresh.)

He thanked me for my $3 and wished a Merry Christmas to me and my family, and I wished him a Happy New Year.

Three Cheers for the Blue

Hiking, tramping along, winded, hoping to find the trail's end soon, hating to stop and rest because only old folks need to stop and rest -- been hiking 40-some years now --and anyway I'm getting dehydrated and need to drink water ASAP (am lazy sometimes about lugging along all the water I might need) and so I asked myself,"What would John Muir do?" Dehydration disorients me, so I looked down at my feet to make sure they were moving. Right then I glimpsed something crisp and refreshingly blue in the earth right in front of me, and saw that a baby had been born. Looked hard to try to identify the bird, but many birds lay blue eggs. Because the egg is spotted, I count robins out, and because of the location in deep woods I count bluebirds out; both robins and bluebirds are field-loving birds. Possibly some kind of sparrow. I wished it a happy birthday.

Who Lives Here? What'd She Eat? Did It Taste Real Good?

As I stepped off the stone steps into my yard to fill the birdbath, I saw this tableau and it told a mystery story. Something had dug a three-inch-wide hole (measured it) beneath the bottom step. It wasn't there yesterday. Whoever this hole-dweller was, he or she was not in sight. But he or she got hold of an egg -- just one, and plain white without identifying markings (I scrubbed the mud off a piece of shell, using an old toothbrush, just to check) -- and had opened and eaten it. Or, less likely, maybe something had hatched here. Eggshell reassembled provided no more clues.

The prime suspect is the large blacksnake who winters beneath my kitchen floor and eats mice. Saw her earlier this spring, sidewinding toward the house then disappearing beneath it, smooth as liquid, right by the kitchen door. Turned up one of her silver babies when digging nearby in order to plant annuals. I know my blacksnake savors eggs. Once I followed a mess of turkey-egg shells to a nest my blacksnake had cleaned out entirely. She was still there and let me take her picture. But if this time it was my snake or any other (because, three years ago, I saw a milk snake curled around the flagstones right here) how did it carry the egg from the nest to its door? In its mouth? Why didn't it dine where the egg was found?

For sure: It must've tasted real good.

Dirty Dozen

Organic eggs? Sure as yer born! So organic and so very free-range that the hens lay them all over creation: in grass, mud, you name it; and a human being, my friend Duke, who has and loves his chickens, then has to go on a genuine egg hunt. The eggs stay fresh without refrigeration for a while, protected by a special invisible coating that you shouldn't wash off until ready to use; it gets washed off when eggs are processed for grocery stores. These you could leave on the counter just as they are for several days. But if washed, into the fridge they must go.

A Baby Bird Was Born

Probably a sparrow's egg. Found it on a walk along Doc Sargent Road, brought it home because it was so beautiful. Also inspirational.

What Becomes a Legend Most?

This blacksnake has lived near kitchen door for at least three years, hiding in the ivy and stones, and in winter she sleeps in warmth and peace beneath the cabin's kitchen floor and now and then eats a mouse. She has, in the past, left a magnificent three-foot shed skin for me to admire. Broken and emptied shells of creamy beige-spotted wild-turkey eggs led me to Ms. Blacksnake and this picture. She held still for a good five minutes as if to say, "I'm giving you paparazzi one chance to get a good snap, now get it, and be off." Look at her elegant costume. I call this photo "What becomes a legend most?"

I think it was one of her silver children I accidentally stepped on one night in July.