Eggs, eggs and more eggs

The best kept secret in South Africa and indeed Africa, is found in a little room at the top of the Fort Durnford museum.  One of Africa's most complete bird egg collections.  Fort Durnford is situated at the top of a koppie a short distance from the Escort bacon factory.  Yes, that same factory my beloved Honk was sent to. 

During the First World war, a young man found himself travelling up through Africa, where he had the opportunity to collect innumerable eggs. These he sent back to his mother, wrapped in cotton wool and placed in tea caddies.  This little room at Fort Durnford, has drawer upon drawer of the finest egg collection I have yet to see.

As a child I was a very keen collector of eggs, which I stored in a large rectangular girdle box filled with mealie meal.  I was very proud of the seventy four eggs I had managed to steal from the poor unsuspecting birds over a period of time.  My first attempt at egg collecting had to be abandoned, after they all went rotten in the Queen Elizabeth commemorative, coronation mug my mother was given by one her sisters.  I learnt the hard way that every egg I found, had to be blown.

My middle sister and I loved the hen house.  It was warm and inviting and the gentle murmur of the chickens was almost like a lullaby.  We used to sample the fowl food, a combination of crushed mealies and laying mash, which I think contained bone meal.  It seemed to taste alright, and we would sit on the floor on piles of hay, contentedly licking this unusual meal from the palms of our hands.  I once held my hand underneath a hen who was about to lay an egg and was rewarded after a short while with her hot, wet, eggy treasure.

Collecting eggs is a very absorbing hobby and I spent many a holiday climbing up every tree imaginable to raid birds nests.  I was very lucky not to have encountered any snakes in my insatiable quest for eggs, as many a time I would slip my hand into an abandoned nest.  If I did find any eggs, I would place them in my mouth in order to leave my hands free to climb down the tree again.  My father taught me to scan the veld, and pinpoint where the birds had been sitting once they had flown out of the grass, and then to scout around for their nests. 

This collection was a real delight to me and, I would gaze at it again and again, lining up all the eggs in pairs from the biggest to the smallest.   One day though, and I couldn't tell you to this day why, I took each egg one by one, and crushed them in my hand, until nothing remained of my collection.  I threw all the bits of egg shell into the long grass, and with my heart breaking, turned and made my way back home.