EGGS! And a zoo day

Last night after dark we were putting our silly chickens to bed (from the tree where they were roosted as usual) when Marc called me over to the back of the chicken house, claiming that Roxie wanted me to say goodnight to her. When I got there he pointed to a row of four, tiny perfect eggs! I was stunned speechless. I wasn't expecting eggs for a good month at least, and these were so small, robin egg sized. This morning I took these pictures, though I should have put them in my hand so you would have some sense of the size. We went back out later in the morning to try and take another picture and were surprised to find their Mommy sitting on them. I was certain the first eggs would come from Liz Lemon or Skittles, as they are the most mature seeming and top of the pecking order. Imagine my surprise to find my little, sweet-natured Phoenix Olive sitting on her eggs! Phoenix chickens, according to my research, aren't very reliable egg layers-- people mostly keep them because they are pretty. I have no idea how often she is laying--we were gone a week and haven't been checking closely in their house so who knows how long they've been there. We were just talking about setting up proper laying boxes, and here we found eggs!

Today Marc and I went to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma. We had fun visiting all the different animals, and especially enjoyed the aquarium which had a fabulous exhibit of all local fish in a big tank environment. Marc was ravenous so we left the park in search of food and stumbled across a place serving Bison burgers. We each had one, mine was without the bun and I'm sure they probably thought I was on a low-carb diet. It was good, though very hard to eat with only a plastic fork. Afterwards we went to my friend Zanna's birthday party which was in Point Defiance Park. It was really fun to catch up with some of my old friends and I was really glad we had that burger because I ended up only eating a handful of chips and a few cherries (and a glass of wine) at the BBQ. The sun finally came back and we had a really great day.