The egg is, indeed, a marvel of natural engineering.
Yesterday, Aly and I went to town for the first time in 7 days. One of our errands included grocery shopping, so when we returned home we loaded a few things into our backpacks. I had a pile of mail in the bottom of my pack. I set a ham on top, with the flat side up, and on top of this I carefully placed a box of eggs, a dozen and a half.
We hurried home, as it was dinner time. We only stopped briefly to explore the huge expanse of pan ice stranded on the bay before heading through the forest. On the first hill, we saw a flashlight coming our way. Michelle, who had not gone to town with us, had hiked out to meet us. We all turned homeward. We briefly discussed passing her one of the packs, but decided to keep our loads.
When we arrived home, I reached into my pack to pull out the eggs. the box came out—empty!We were horrified. All those eggs had gotten loose down in the pack! The mail lay unprotected. The ham would not be affected, but that weight rolling around on the eggs and the mail could not have helped anything.
We began pulling eggs out of the pack singly and in pairs. Inspecting each one, we found no cracks. Eventually, all 18 eggs emerged. Of them all, after a 1½ mile hike over rough trail, tideland, and pack ice, only one showed any damage at all. It had a slight break in the shell, but the membrane remained intact!
I’m still amazed by this.
As you can imagine, I am rarely given eggs to carry. I’m the muscle in the group, others provide the egg-preserving finesse. Apparently, we’re being more careful than need be?
Here’s to the marvelous egg!