| Current music: | lemon jelly -- nice weather for ducks |
The other egg of the phoenix
Picture, if you will, the distant rural deeps of Byelorussia. I don't actually know what they look like, so my image is somewhat fuzzy at the edges. But there are certain near-constants of distant rural deeps everywhere, to wit: sheep. This isn't an entry about sheep.
It's sort of to do with hens, though. You see, out in these distant rural deeps of which I speak, hens occasionally lay eggs. Special eggs. Eggs with three yolks, or eggs with no yolk, or eggs containing other eggs inside themselves. Eggs which in other countries or in other times might be thought to be an omen (say, an omen of a large omelette in the near future).
In Byelorussia, however, they are put in the special safe of the Head Vetinarian. You know how you've never heard of some place or monument, and then you find out about it and all of a sudden you really want to visit it? It's like that with me and that egg safe. I know I never will, but it's nice that something that odd exists in the world somewhere.
I remember as a child being fascinated by the litany of the everyday unusual; and though I never found a four-leafed clover or caught a black red-spotted ladybird, I do remember being called into the kitchen one sunny holiday day. My family were standing around a mug, looking suitably impressed. There was one shell on the counter-top and two yolks in the mug, nestled up on each other waiting for the inevitable whisk. Now double-yolked eggs are either an omen of death, or pregnancy, or marriage, or good luck, depending on which Old Wife you ask; and I have to say that none of those happened in the immediate aftermath of the Breaking of the Egg. I did feel vaguely smug for a while in the knowledge that something had happened to make the day different, though[1].
A few years later, the supermarkets instituted scanning for double yolks (possibly for EU-related reasons but more likely I suspect out of a realisation that it's always the mushroom with three stalks or the humorously-shaped potato which gets left on the shelf) and the citizens of the UK could once again buy freely of the produce of ill-kept battery hens without having to fear that their eggs might be weird.
Whilst uniformity may sell, however, novel uniformity sells too. Thus it is that one may now buy double-yolked eggs from Sainsbury's in packs of six.
And, sheep that I am, I did.
[1] I've never been quite sure where the line lies between the fascinatingly unusual and the freakishly unusual, really; I'd guess it's the same border as between harmlessness and harmfulness, but then again double-yolked eggs aren't precisely unsinister[2] and there are plenty of harmless but thought-freakish insects. Probably it's another of those interestingly murky regions of the human psyche. It's interesting with regard to people; because most ways of people being unusual are, well, unusual. But there are enough different ways of being unusual that not being unusual in any way at all is probably also quite unusual, and of course all of these unusualnesses are weighted down with the usual folklore. Take being part of a multiple birth, say (perhaps two percent of the population, and supposedly a sign of infidelity or eating double-yolked eggs.) Or double crowns (two to five percent, and probably a sign of something) or extra nipples (five percent, and a sure sign of witchishess; people even pierce them(NSFW)). Two percent of people are ambidextrous, two percent have extra wisdom teeth. Between me and my sisters at least three of the above are covered, and that's not even counting the peculiar little toe which seems to run in the family. There's almost a small smugness attached to harmless oddnesses; as if it's a way of being individual without having to expend effort, perhaps. Provided you stay on the right side of the border.
[2] In fact the reality of the double-yolked egg is rather grim -- it is perfectly possible, if fertilised, for two chickenlings to develop, curled up tight against each ther, until they are ready to hatch; but then they are unable to break the shell because they only have each other to push against. And one cannot, alas, perform a Caesarian on an egg.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
gnimmel) wrote,
