WHEN GOOD EGGS GO BAD

Picture this:

You are recovering from a long weekend full of fun and adventure. You arrive at work early Tuesday morning and blithely head out to check on your eggs which should have hatched into adorable, fluffy chicks over the weekend.

You open the incubator and see, indeed, a cluster of adorable, fluffy chicks. But what's this? The adorable, fluffy chicks are bunched together and staring up at you with barely concealed disgruntled looks on their faces. Why the devil are they all crowded over...oh.

OH. MY. GOD.

In the back corner of the incubator, the corner furthest away from the disgruntled chicks, sits an egg. But not just any egg. It being early Tuesday morning following a long weekend full of fun and adventure, and you being A Bit Slow On The Uptake, you pick up the egg for a better look. Let me repeat:

OH. MY. GOD.

Eggshells are porous and you are about to get a visceral lesson in this property. The egg is leaking yolk and albumen THROUGH the solid shell. But it's not the sight of the yolk and albumen that's the problem. No, the problem is that this egg was not fertilized and has been sitting in a warm, humid incubator for the last three weeks. Being Very Slow On The Uptake, you take a sniff of the egg to confirm your suspicions that perhaps the egg has gone off.

OH. MY. GOD.

You realize that there are few smells in this world as foul as that of a rotten egg. And you realize that this was an important lesson learned, oh, about two decades ago when you first read "Charlotte's Web" and Templeton the rat stunk up the barnyard with his rotten egg. This is a lesson that you should not have forgotten.

You recoil but luckily retain enough sense to NOT DROP THE EGG, which would increase the problem thousand-fold. You gingerly transfer the egg to a garbage bag and seal it with about a dozen knots, all the while profusely apologizing to the adorable, fluffy chicks who have spent several hours stuck in the incubator with that rotten egg.

This tale ends with egg disposal safely accomplished, a sigh of relief and some deep breaths of the sweet, sweet Spring air...and the thought that at least this would make a good blog entry.