Fannie Speaks Out on Chicken Conception

One morning while Richard and I ate at the local diner, a new waitress struck up a  conversation with us.

“My four-year-old son asked me how they got chickens into the eggs.”

Impressed her young son could reason out the question, she said, “I don’t know the answer. Can you tell me how the chickens ended up in some eggs, but not in the one’s in the grocery store?”

Now mind you over the course of our lives some interesting questions crossed our path, such as “Can you walk to an island?” (When there are no bridges present)  or “What does a hard drive look like?” or “Why do they put a cup holder on the PC because if you spill your drink won’t it ruin the computer?” But asking us to explain how chickens conceive, new territory.

The waitress wanted to know and “walking encyclopedia” stickers somehow gleamed from our foreheads.

I said, “The rooster and hen had a good time.”

A blank expression crossed her face. Richard looked away suppressing a laugh.

She asked, “How come the roosters don’t break the eggs when they get fertilized? I thought they worked like salmon, where the boy salmon spreads its sperm over the eggs the girl salmon laid on the stream bed, only in a nest.”

I explained egg fertilization in flightless birds. Richard accompanied me with the bird noises.

“Oh,” she said, blushing, “I didn’t know. Thank you.”

About halfway through the explanation, Richard and I realized most of the restaurant listened, either in amusement or real earnest.

We experienced an E.F. Hutton moment, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen”.

Who knew we would give the bird half of the birds and the bees’ conversation to an adult with a child for an audience?

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