"Serpent!! SerPENT!!!"

I have been really wanting to post this story about Evie and the egg and now I'm going to, even though it happened a couple of days before Easter... and I've already told many of you the story. The good thing about having waited this long is that now I can retell the story without feeling nauseous, so, that's a plus.

Johnnie and Tammy came to our house the Wednesday night before Easter. The next morning, we loaded up the cars and headed to Tennessee. Well, before we left, the kids were all playing in the front yard while the grown-ups were loading the vehicles. When I was inside the house I heard a bird squawking, and I remembered that a few days prior I had seen a bird who seemed to be protecting her eggs in this batch of rocks at the end of my driveway. I had remarked to Jeremy at how weird that was that a bird would lay her eggs in rocks. (We thought it was a mockingbird.) So as I heard the bird squawking the first thing I thought was "oh, I should go tell Tammy about that bird, in case the kids are playing near her eggs. Where's my wallet? Did I get my phone charger? Did I pack Evie's Easter dress?..." And so my thoughts wandered away from the poor bird. Several minutes later I went outside. We were all standing out there and Evie comes up to us with this dark red gook all over her shirt. We were really alarmed and confused "What the heck is that?" We knew that she had been near that bird and we were wondering if maybe the bird pooped on her or something, but it was dark red gook... hmmm. Well, Jeremy grabs her and takes her in to clean her off. While he was washing her hands... she said... "yucky, chocolate egg!"

Blergh.

We headed out for Tennessee and for the next 2 and a half hours I felt sick to my stomach, and couldn't stop thinking about "the egg incident." Finally, Jeremy said "I am really glad that I didn't see her bite into the egg, but MAN, I wish I could have seen her look of disappointment when she realized it wasn't chocolate."

When we got to Tennessee and were telling Jeremy's uncle about the incident he told us that it was a Kildeer bird, and that they lay their eggs in rocks. Apparently the Kildeer bird will act like it has injured its wing if a prey comes near his/her eggs so the prey will be more interested in this injured animal than the bird eggs. Very neat, and also very sad-- because Tammy said that she had seen that bird acting like that when Evie had run over there. That poor bird was trying so hard to protect her little eggs, then Evie, the little terror monster, destroyed one.

Well, it took a while for the eggs to hatch, but I actually was able to see a couple of little Kildeers walking around. So, all's well that ends well.