Look very closely at the strange egg in the picture.

Something isn’t quite as it should be.  Can you see it?

Frank collected this egg.  He is the biggest fan of our homegrown eggs, and consequently, the biggest fan of our hens.  It is actually an endearing trait…he loves collecting the eggs just as much as Nora does, and when he brings them in, he is as proud of them as a kid with hard-won loot after an Easter egg hunt.

But this egg was very, very different.  The shell didn’t harden, as shells usually do the moment they leave the hen’s body.  It remained very soft and flimsy; like thin, leathery plastic wrap.  Touching it, I thought of crocodile eggs, buried carefully in wet sand.  Not that I’ve ever seen crocodile eggs outside of a documentary.  It’s just that…this strange egg was breathtakingly outlandish. When you held it in your hand you had a powerful sense of its vulnerability.   Its delicacy.  Light penetrated it easily.

We figured it might be a First Egg.  Since our hens just started laying a few weeks ago, with a few more hens joining the ranks each day.  There might still be a couple out there waiting for their great day.  Which hen?  No idea…  I hope though that whoever she is, she didn’t mourn a mischance, but that she rejoiced (at least for a hen-second) in her wondrous,  unusual creation.