Some Things I Know About Eggs

Fresh-laid eggs are best. They're fine for scrambling, frying, or baking.  But here's what I always say when I bring a carton of eggs as a hostess gift:  if you're planning to hard-boil them, or whip the whites for a souffle, you need to age them a bit.  Leaving them on the counter overnight should do it.

The color of the shell indicates nothing other than the breed of the bird.  A pure-white shell may come from a happily pastured hen, and a brown or blue or green one from a hen kept in a cage.

If you break open an egg and the yolk is a shockingly bright orange, congratulations!  It means the hen has been out on grass, which has transmitted its gift of carotene to the bird, and now to you.

If you break open an egg and find a slight red spot in the yolk, don't freak.  It is NOT an embryo. It just means that a tiny blood vessel ruptured as the egg traveled down the oviduct.  It will vanish without a trace in cooking.

According to Temple Grandin, laying hens are the most abused of all farm animals http://www.grandin.com/inc/animals.make.us.human.ch7.html.  If you find it in your heart to care about the welfare of chickens, spend an extra few cents and buy eggs from cage-free hens.

Hens are bright, warm-hearted creatures, not mere egg-making machines.   Let us try to see beyond the egg on our plate to the living, questing being that laid it.

Sentient Beings Everywhere

I read somewhere--I think it was in a book by the herbalist Stephen Buehner--that when a field of clover is being overgrazed by sheep, the plants increase their production of phytoestrogens, which causes the sheep to miscarry.  At the moment, our fields are still covered in snow, but when it thaws and I resume walking in them, I will be apologizing to the clover with every step.

I don't know about you, but over the last few years, I have become painfully sensitive to the feelings of the beings that surround me.  I was eating lunch with a friend today, and a skinny fly-like bug landed next to her plate.  She brushed it off the table and stepped on it--and I had to hold back from mewling some insanity like "oh, the poor little thiiing!" 

I used to laugh at people who carried house-invading bugs to the door on a paper napkin and set them free, but I have joined the ranks of the bug liberators.  I do kill some bugs, such as the big, hairy wolf spiders that scuttle indoors in the fall.  But I do it in self defense--I am so creeped out by the things, that knowing that there was one in the room with me would drive me mad. 

Pretty soon, it will be ant season in our kitchen.  Legions of tiny workers will stream over the counter and across the sink in search of a grain of sugar, a molecule of fat.  Armed with a spray bottle of soapy water, I will stand above them and rain death upon them.  (The soap clogs up their breathing holes and coats the pheromones they leave on their trails, so other ants can't follow.)  But I hate doing it.  I feel like some merciless god wreaking havoc on the innocent.  For all I know, and I think of this every single time I spritz the ants, there is an angry and much bigger deity standing in the clouds above me with his finger on the nozzle....

Of course I am not alone in this.  Our generation thinks very differently about animals these days.  Where as children we tolerated the idea that free-roaming family dogs regularly got run over and were as regularly replaced, now we hire dog nannies to walk our soul mates so they won't be bored while we're away at work.  At dinner, many of us think about the animal whose body part we are about to dig into.  Many have stopped eating animals altogether.

And some of us--though we tend to be quiet about this, lest we be sent away from the table--think about the plants who were once alive and now lie limp on our plates, anointed with the blood of dead olives and the crushed remains of the fruit of the pepper plant.

Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone...

...nor critters by kibble, hay, grain, laying mash, or fish pellets.

I spend a good deal of time administering all these things, and then cleaning up the resulting poop. But I spend just as much, if not more, time seeing to the emotional needs of the animals around here, as follows:

1. Wolfie. Wolfie has an emotional need to have fun—he's a young dog—and because he's a dog, fun and work are the same thing (dogs are lucky that way). Hence the herding lessons, and the insane circus that passes for herding practice when I'm on my own with him and the goats.

2. Lexi. She has always been an independent soul, but every once in a while she limps up to me and pushes her gray muzzle against my knees and I know she needs more than the home-cooked meals I feed her. It's hard for her to move, because of her galloping arthritis, so she mostly lies around quietly and will not, if I'm on the couch reading, come up and try to get me to play, as Wolfie does. I have to remind myself, a couple of times a day, to find her and pet her and ask how she's feeling.

3. The goats. They have more emotional needs than a corps de ballet. Virginia Slim, the newcomer, is settling in, but still won't eat her grain unless I'm there talking to her—this is while she's on the milking stand and I've finished milking. Meanwhile, Blossom and Alsiki, who have gobbled down their grain, are wondering why nobody is petting them, so I have to see to that. With all this goat gruntling, it takes me a long time to get back to the house with the milk.

Every few days, I give the goats a good brushing, which they love. They close their eyes and go into a trance, but they insist on being brushed all at the same time. So I go from goat to goat, brushing a hip here, a shoulder there, while my other hand scratches a head here, a neck there. By the time we're done, I'm in a trance as well.

4. The chickens. Do they have emotional needs? As many as you or I. They love to be talked to in low, soothing tones. They love it if I move around them slowly. If I sit down among them they will come up and start a conversation. I haven't done enough sitting among chickens lately. Must remedy that.

5. The fish. My two Shubunkin gold fish don't have emotional needs. They have emotional problems. They've been in my tub garden for what, a month now, and they still spend their time hidden behind some stones I provided for their privacy. Every day I cast a few pellets on the water, calling their names, and...nothing. Later, when they think I've gone away, they emerge out of the murk and snap up the food, then disappear again. I realize that they're probably like this because they have unmet emotional needs, but how do you make a fish happy?