Sylvia’s dysfunctions are many. She tries to sleep on top of her house instead of inside it. She pecks at the other chickens and has trouble keeping friends. And worst of all, she is always finding new ways to fail at laying a proper egg.
She has laid small eggs with translucent membranes instead of hard shells. She has laid normal looking eggs with soft shells, and eggs with hard but misshapen shells. She has even laid eggs with no shell at all. Yuck.
And then there are the wind eggs. A wind egg is normal in appearance but has no yolk inside. I call them wind eggs because it is a widely accepted term for the phenomenon, and also because it carries a certain sense of mystery with it. But there is another common term for a no-yolker. The fart egg. I cannot quite bring myself to use this term. For one thing, it does not have any sense of mystery at all. Just the opposite. And of course I am a mature adult. “Sylvia has given us another wind egg,” I’ll say. Then one of the boys will correct me. “You mean she laid a fart egg, Dad!” The others giggle. My wife laughs. I am surrounded by immaturity.
Fine. Laugh at me. I tell them that there are also many terms for a chicken that cannot lay proper eggs. Casserole. Cacciatore. Cordon Bleu. The boys pretend I’m joking.
Now, to her credit, Sylvia is getting better at laying proper eggs. The kind you would not be afraid to give to a nice neighbor. Her other eggs we can give to neighbors we don’t like.
Searching for Yoldash 