Saturday, February 04, 2006

The egg and us

As we approached our friends' chicken coop, we heard the inimicable ba-gawk of a triumphant hen, announcing the production of an egg. Madame Curie came leaping out of the nesting room, and a later check showed her turquoise-colored prize. The other two hens seemed to be checking on it, and then leaping around themselves. Strange creatures.
We attended a beer and pizza party that night at the home of some climbing friends. They had brewed a couple of different beers, an ale and something dark, both very tasty. They also had an enormous container of dough, which different people formed into pizza bases over the course of the evening and baked with an amazing range of toppings. There were wonderful salads, and a fine semolina caramel pear upsidedown cake. Some of us there talked about a plan to meet up in Indian Creek, Utah, in April, for crack climbing and hiking. It's near Moab, in the southwestern corner of the state, and I've heard intriguing descriptions of the place, seen lots of photos in the climbing mags. April evidently is the best time of the year to go there, as it is infernally cold before then, and hellishly hot later. It was a nice daydream on a wild and woolly night.
We came home in torrential rain, driving up the hill towards home like salmon going upstream.
Sheets of rain going sideways in the streetlights, gale force gusts of wind. Oh, yes, and cold.
Had my belly full of pizza to keep me warm.

3 Comments:

Blogger Neil Shakespeare said...

'The Triumphant Hens'...is that a rock band?

4:09 AM  
Blogger zelda1 said...

I grew up living between my mom's home and my grandmother's. Both had chickens and at both homes, I was in charge of gathering the eggs. Not an easy task when the hens are possessive of their eggs. So, I spent a lot of my youth trying to lure the hens off their nest, so I could go grab the eggs and run, usually with a hen close at my heals. Yes, those were the good ole days. My grandmother's hens had double yoked eggs. She thought she was charmed for having such luck, my mom's hens just put out plain brown eggs. Both had rich yellow yokes, I suppose from all the insects and worms that they ate, running around the yard. We had duck eggs to and goose eggs. They were huge. Yep, those were the good ole days, back when an egg was as natural as a rose.

4:20 AM  
Blogger Phil said...

Might be South Carolina's women's basketball team, Neil. Preferable, I would think, to Lady 'Cocks.

1:41 PM  

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