Strange Egg Anomaly
A cracked eggshell on the sidewalk. Just resting there as if neatly placed. Was it an omen?
There was nothing around to explain its presence on my morning walk. If it had slipped out of a trash bag, there should have been a few random shreds of debris that had tagged along. How did it escape so cleanly? The eggshell sat alone, pure and white in its singularity. Its crack was tidy too, so that the shell retained a round shape. It could have been a ping pong ball.
That's what intrigued me. This vacated shell had nothing surrounding it to give it context. Was it some sort of sign? And if so, to what did it portend? Was something being birthed.....or broken?
It started on an ordinary Tuesday morning, as Simone shuffled her way to the corner market. The neighborhood was quiet, save for the occasional chirp of sparrows. But just as she passed the old oak tree at the end of West 81st, she stopped abruptly. There on the sidewalk lay a cracked egg and a small scattering of nuts.
ReplyDeleteSimone frowned. It wasn’t the kind of thing one typically encountered on her route. She poked at the egg with a stick, its yolk shimmering like liquid gold in the morning light. Nearby, a streak of chalk hinted at the remains of a child’s drawing, a hopscotch game erased by time or weather.
“Strange,” she muttered to no one in particular.
By lunchtime, the cracked egg and nuts had become the talk of the block. Mr. Fenton, who rarely left his porch, swore he’d seen a squirrel wrestling with an egg early that morning. “Darn thing probably stole it from someone’s kitchen,” he proclaimed to the gathering neighbors.
“No squirrel carries eggs,” countered Mrs. Park, shaking her head. “This is deliberate. Someone left it here.”
That evening, as dusk settled over 81st Street, twelve-year-old Charlie Harper crept to the scene with his magnifying glass. The boy fancied himself a detective and had been itching for a mystery to solve. He crouched beside the mess, his nose nearly touching the sticky sidewalk.
"Eggshell’s thin," he muttered, examining the jagged edges. "Not a chicken egg. Maybe a bird’s." He picked up a nut and sniffed it. "Toasted, not raw. Definitely not squirrel food."
Charlie felt a nudge against his foot and looked down to see a crow watching him with unsettling intensity. Its black eyes glittered like onyx. A second later, it cawed loudly, flapped its wings, and took off toward the oak tree.
“Wait!” Charlie called, scrambling to follow.
He reached the base of the tree and peered upward, his heart racing. There, nestled in a crook of the branches, was a small, makeshift contraption made of twigs, foil, and string—a sort of nest. In it sat another egg and a few more nuts.
Charlie stared, astonished, as the crow landed nearby, cocking its head at him as if in challenge. It grabbed a nut from the pile with its beak, dropped it deliberately, and took off again.
By the time he returned home, Charlie had pieced it together. The crow wasn’t just any bird—it was a collector. Somewhere, perhaps from an open window or a careless picnic, it had swiped the egg and nuts. Maybe it was practicing some strange ritual, or maybe it was just a scavenger with a flair for drama.
Charlie decided not to tell the adults. He liked the idea of the crow and its peculiar treasures being his little secret. Every day after school, he’d leave a few nuts by the oak tree, curious to see what the crow might do next.
The cracked egg and nuts were no longer a mystery, but to Charlie, they were the start of something far more interesting
Heavens to Murgatroyd! You've just written a children's book! Or perhaps the opening chapter. A compelling narrative in just one comment. You have a knack for storytelling H.B. Me thinks you are a writer who should be writing. Or at the very least ----blogging! I'd like to see keep a blog. As you know full well from reading mine, you don't have to have anything interesting to say! :-)
ReplyDelete*Correcting the second to last sentence: I'd like to see you keep a blog."
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