What came first, the egg or my insanity? Part 2

    If you know anything about the Scribe, it's that she's a prankster.  She's the one who convinced an entire neighborhood of much younger children to pick all the dandelions so she could earn money.  She's the one who hid a noise machine (on the heartbeat setting) behind the piano and told her friends about the "Tell Tale Heart."  She's the one who held up a snail and told a bully to "lick it."  She's also the one who convinced people if they buried colored eggs, an Easter tree would grow soon after.  That's why this story is so epic.  Because the Scribe has had it coming and she just might have gotten hers.

This is a continuation from yesterday:

What came first, the egg or my . . .

Now, before finishing this story, if you're tenderhearted like me you need to know this does have a miraculous, hilarious ending.  So, even if things seem bad, keep going.  It'll get better . . . I think.

    The Scribe immediately took the egg.  The Hippie seemed all right with this--which shocked me.  Normally they'll fight over something for hours.  Maybe the Hippie shares my fear of wild birds.  Who knew?

    I went downstairs and hung out with the babies.  The Scribe vowed to watch the egg, have it and hold it, as long as she lived or until it hatched.

    When I came up the stairs though, I nearly screamed.  She'd plugged in her lava lamp.  Left the lava part off and put the egg directly on the bulb.  "Oh my gosh!"  I grabbed the egg.  It felt like a coal of fire, or a gallstone from Lucifer himself.  I knew the baby duck, goose--thing would be dead.  I tried stalling the tears which came to my eyes, but it was hard. "What in the heck are you doing?"

    "Incubating it," the Scribe said.  

    "Incubating it," my voice turned low, "to death!  It's so hot, Babe.  That was like throwing it in a fire!  I think . . . it's dead."

    The Hippie, who sat playing her DSI looked up from the couch.  "You've done it now," she said to the Scribe.

    "Don't look at me like that," the Scribe told her sister.  "I'll bring it back.  I swear."

    I felt a bit nauseous at this point.  We'd killed a little bird.  It was like Zeke, my son, all over again.  How I had to pull the plug.  How he deserved a shot at life, but couldn't live in that failing body.  As the Scribe wrapped the egg of fire in a napkin, blanket and some pipe cleaners, I hoped beyond anything that the baby bird would live.  Who knows, God makes those shells pretty tough.  

    I prayed then, really prayed.  "God, you couldn't save Zeke.  I kept hoping you'd heal my son, but I guess you were too busy helping other people. But maybe you can save this bird just for me.  I don't pray much since I figure you'll do whatever you want to anyway, and Zeke was meant to die . . . in your eyes.  But if you could save this duckling . . . or whatever it is, I'd be really thankful forever.  I might not raise the thing.  I'll always remember your kindness though and then I'll blog about it."

    Right as the prayer ended, I heard a massive crunch.  And when I looked over, the Scribe had wrapped the egg so tightly it had cracked.  A pipe cleaner stuck through the egg.  It was obvious, whatever had been in there, couldn't have survived.  This crazy, oozy, liquid of death came out and once more I wanted to hurl.

    "Oh . . . God!  Not again," I screamed.

    The Scribe shook.  "Oh!  OH!  I'm a murderer.  I'm a certified murderer!"  She ran around, still holding the egg, bawling around the kitchen.

    "I can't take this roller coaster!"  I entered a stage of grief--blame.  "It isn't OUR fault.  Why would some idiot steal a duck egg and then give it to us?!  Throw it in the garbage outside.  I can't take anymore!"
    I thought of Humpty Dumpty.  I'd never felt quite so bad for all those king's horses and all those king's men who couldn't put Humpty together again. WHAT A WRETCHED FEELING!   

    So, the Scribe ran outside and threw the egg away.  The whole time, the Hippie just glanced at us, while still playing her video game.  "Sometimes life sucks," she said and turned on her belly.  Her toes danced in the air and I wanted to shake her.  Didn't she know a living creature had just died either by lava lamp or pipe cleaner?!  Didn't she have a heart?!

    Then I thought of my own actions and as the Scribe came back in, I decided, we needed to have a funeral.  "We've got to get that egg.  That was a cruel thing I asked you to do.  We're not in the mafia.  We're a young family, making it by the best we can.  We don't throw bodies in dumpsters.  We bury them!"

    "You two are gonna get it out of the garbage can?" the Hippie asked.

    "Of course," the Scribe said.  "I think Mom's right.  That's no way to treat a duckling."

    The Scribe and I walked outside and dug through the huge garbage can.  She kept screaming about being a murderer.  I kept crying about how I should never ask God for anything.  Some of the neighborhood kids saw AND HEARD us.  They ran over to find out what was going on.  We finally got the wrapped egg from the garbage and an adult neighbor even came over.   

    As the Scribe and I set the blanketed egg gently on the ground, the man asked us, "What's going on?"    

    What the hell was his problem?  Couldn't he see THE EGG?  Or our tear-stained faces?!  At least when I looked up the Hippie had glanced through the front window--maybe she did care about life.

    "Back away," I told the man.  This wasn't the time for pleasantries.  Something had just died and it needed a proper burial.  "We're trying to have a funeral here!"

    He crinkled his nose at me.

    "Take all of those napkins, blankets, pipe cleaners and . . . things off of it.  We need to take it out of the shell," I ordered the Scribe.  I kept thinking maybe it could still live.

    "Me?" the Scribe asked, in front of the horde of children and the nosy man who WOULD NOT leave and must love funerals.

    "Yes, you.  You're the one who wrapped it so tightly that pipe cleaners went through the shell!"

    She looked at the kids, took a deep breath and continued.  She was so brave!  It wasn't until a moment near the end that she screamed and passed me the egg.  "I can't, Mom!  I think there are feathers in there.  I killed it.  I don't want to put my hands near something that's dead.  What if its soul goes into my body?!  Plus, I want to say nice things about it, from a distance."

    I unwrapped the egg then.  I shook because it's the grossest thing I've ever done.  No one wants to pull a dead half-cooked, half-impaled duckling from a shell--NO ONE.

    I cried really hard.  The neighbor--who lives several houses away and still wouldn't leave--leaned closer.  "It'll be okay."

    I just looked at him.  Who the hell was he?  God?  I'd witnessed a murder and since I was the only adult in the house--at the time of death--it was my fault.  And he thought IT WOULD BE OKAY!  What a schmuck.  What a professional jerk.

    A sob left my throat as I pulled the final pipe cleaner from the egg.  A hole stayed on the left side where a clear-ish liquid had come out.  A huge crack ran the length of the shell.  I closed my eyes, held my breath and everyone leaned closer.

    "I'm going . . . to open the egg," I said.

    Moments passed. Living birds sang.  The wind whistled through the dead grass.  The Scribe kept mumbling about accidents gone wrong and stupid people who steal ducklings.  That's when the egg broke fully and I gasped at the miracle unfolding before us.

    As the egg cracked, my eyes felt huge.  I watched in slow-motion as an uncooked egg yolk and white fell to the ground and splattered below us!

    I blinked once, twice.  The Scribe blinked thrice.  The neighbor kids didn't blink--they just walked away, bored.  The man stared at me--a frozen jerk.  "That was a raw egg?" he asked because some people are clueless and need glasses.  

    "Yeah, that's what it looks like," I said.  Boy, he couldn't be a detective--not in a million years.

    "You were crying over a raw egg?" he asked and I nodded.  "Some women are so weird!"

    "You have no idea what was going on here."

    "Back away," he mocked, "we're having a funeral. . . ."  Then he FINALLY left.

    I looked at the Scribe.  She fell to her knees and hugged me.  "And I thought I was a murderer," she said.

    "And I was about to throw up!"  We hugged each other--over that egg yolk mess--and laughed.  When we got inside, I turned to the Hippie.  She looked up from her DSI for a minute, and I swear she smirked for half-a-second.

    "Were you in on this the whole time?" I asked.

    "Why, no. What happened?"

    We explained and she shook her head.  "Look at this face, Mom.  Would I do something like that?  I'm going to have a talk with the girl who gave me the egg!"

    "Really, then why didn't you come outside for the funeral?" the Scribe asked.

    "Because, I didn't want to see a dead bird, that's gross."  Then the Hippie rolled onto her back and winked at me.  "I'm glad everything turned out all right," she said.  I knew she would never confess--never.  That's why I think my seven-year-old Hippie is a genius because--although some might say it was a feather-brained idea--she just pulled off the crime of a century.

P. S. If you'd like more information about Zeke, my son who passed away, please click here: 

 "The Golden Sky"