In this one Pippin is 13, Merry is 21 and Frodo is 35.  This is a bit of Easter foolishness.  This one takes place in the kitchen of Bag End. Hope you all enjoy it.                                          

                                    "An Egg of A Different Color"

“So eggs really do come in different colors, Pip,” Merry said, smiling.

“Are you sure those are proper eggs, Merry?  I mean, if they are brown on the outside, then might they be bad inside?”  Pippin still looked skeptical about Merry’s choice of breakfast food.

“Pippin, these are duck eggs,” Merry explained, trying to remain patient.  “Duck eggs are brown, but it doesn’t mean that they’ve gone over or anything of the sort.  They are perfectly fresh and they will be delicious.”

“Duck eggs?”  Pippin frowned, picking up one and sniffing it doubtfully. 

“Ducks do lay eggs, you know,” Merry said, in exasperation.  “In fact, I found these eggs only this morning and so they are not only fresh, but they are extremely fresh.  Now, I say we quit discussing this and make breakfast.”  He raised one of the large, brown eggs over the rim of a bowl and prepared to crack it, but Pippin stayed his hand.

“You got these eggs from some strange duck that you don’t even know?” Pippin asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“Look, what do you expect, that I went up to the duck and introduced myself first?” Merry sighed.  “Pardon me, you don’t know me, but my name is Meriadoc Brandybuck and I wonder if you might be inclined to lend me a few of these, delicious-looking brown duck eggs of yours?”  He rolled his eyes at Pippin and waved the egg in his younger cousin’s face.  “This is an egg, Pippin and it is perfectly fine.  There is nothing the matter with it.  We eat duck eggs in Buckland all of the time.  Don’t they have ducks in the Tooklands?”

“We have ducks,” Pippin said, backing up from the egg a bit.  “We eat ducks.  But I have never eaten duck eggs before.”

“How do you know?”  Merry demanded.  “You may have been served them for breakfast every morning of your childhood!  Because once I crack this egg open and put it into this bowl, it will look exactly like any chicken egg.  Once it’s cooked, it will taste like a chicken egg.  There is no difference!”

“Tis larger, Merry,” Pippin said, picking up a second egg and studying it intently.  “Tis larger and it’s brown.  I think it may be shaped a wee bit differently as well.  It seems longer to me.”  His eyes were nearly crossed as he held the egg inches from his nose.

“Larger is a very good thing, Pippin,” Merry advised.  “That means we will have more delicious egg to go around.  More egg for you and more egg for me.”

“Can you eat robin’s eggs?” Pippin asked, looking at Merry and lowering the egg back to the bowl.

“Of course not!” Merry objected.

“I just wondered,” Pippin said.  “I mean those are blue.  If you can eat the brown ones, then why can’t you eat the blue ones?”

Merry groaned.  “Do you eat robins?”

“Of course not!”

“But you do eat ducks?”

“I just told you that I had, didn’t I?”

“Well, then, that’s the difference,” Merry said, smiling.  “You can’t eat robin eggs because you don’t eat robins.  We eat chickens and so we eat their eggs.  We eat ducks and so we eat their eggs.  We don’t eat robins and so we do not eat their eggs.”

“I suppose it would be a great deal of trouble for almost nothing at all,” Pippin said.  “I mean, robin eggs are so very small.  It would take a great many just to make one small serving of eggs, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Merry said, his frustration growing.  “Now, these are perfectly acceptable eggs and I am starving.  Why don’t you let me fix these and then you will see how very good they are.”

“I suppose so, only I am still a bit bothered by the color,” Pippin frowned.  “I don’t know that it’s safe to eat colored eggs.”

“You aren’t going to be eating the shells!” Merry said.  “I crack them open and you will be eating what comes out of the shell.  We will not be eating egg shells.”

“All the same, as careful as you are, sometimes a wee bit of shell gets in with the eggs and you’ve eaten it before you realize it,” Pippin said.  “When I made eggs yesterday, chicken eggs, I lost a bit of shell in the bowl and so one of us did eat some of the shell yesterday, Merry.  I just don’t think it can be a good thing to eat colored egg shells.”

“Pippin, the color of the shell means nothing!” Merry said.  “These eggs will not harm you.  In fact, I will break one open now so that you can see.”  He smacked the egg on the side of the bowl a bit too hard and egg and shell went everywhere.  It was all over the table, partly in the bowl, and some of it was actually on Pippin’s shirt.  “See, it’s just an egg!” Merry said, wiping some of it off of the end of his own nose.  “Just an ordinary egg!”

Pippin looked down at the egg drying on his shirt and then back up at Merry.  “It certainly looks the same as a chicken egg, but you didn’t have to get it all over me to prove your point.”

Merry sighed and sank into a chair on his side of the table.  “I surrender.  We’ll have toast and ham, but no eggs.”

“Do you suppose that there are other colors of eggs, Merry?” Pippin asked, picking up a piece of the brown shell and studying it.  “I mean, do you suppose that there is any sort of bird that might lay green eggs or yellow eggs?  That would be funny if the eggs were yellow inside and outside, wouldn’t it?  Or if the green eggs turned another color once they were ripe, like some apples do.  Red eggs!  Merry, do you think that there are any red eggs?”

Merry let his forehead rest against the sticky surface of the table.  “Pippin, eggs do not come in every color.”

“Wouldn’t it be pretty if they did?” Pippin asked, smiling.  “Imagine that you go out to the barn to get the eggs and you come back with a basket full of eggs and all of them are different colors!  It’d be like a rainbow in a basket, Merry!”  Pippin waited for Merry to reply to this and when he didn’t, Pippin took one of the duck eggs and broke it gently against the bowl.

“Pippin, what are you two doing in here?” Frodo asked.  “I thought that you might be making breakfast.”  He stood over the table and looked at the mess and then glanced at Merry who had not moved but seemed to be mumbling something about colored eggs.  “You seem to have got a bit of egg on the table, lad.  You have to be careful.”

“Oh, Merry did that,” Pippin smiled.  “I don’t think he meant to, but he just hit the egg a wee bit too hard on the bowl.  I’m doing it the way Pearl showed me and it works quite well.”  Pippin took a second egg and demonstrated.

“That’s very good, Pippin,” Frodo said.  He then looked over at Merry and frowned.  “Merry, are you feeling well?”

“I’m fine,” Merry said, standing up.  “In fact, I am going outside while you two finish making breakfast and look for colored eggs.  I am going to hunt all over the place until I find one of every color.  I am going on an egg hunt!”  Having said this, Merry left the kitchen.

“An egg hunt?” Frodo frowned and scratched his head. 

Pippin shrugged and broke another egg on the edge of the bowl.  “If he finds any colored eggs, then maybe we should let him be the one to eat them.  They might be pretty, but I still do think that eggs should be white.”  He began to beat the eggs in the bowl and Frodo decided that he would be better off if he didn’t know anything more about all of this.

Happy Easter to everyone!

G.W.     03/26/2005