Egg Art: How I Got Started as an Egger

For several years during my zoo keeping days, I belonged to the International Egg Art Guild.  This all started by my attending an Alabama Emu Association meeting in which the guest speaker was a lady who decorated eggs.  At first I didn’t think much of it, but later had second thoughts.

Goose Egg Ballerina on Polished Stone with Gold/Pearl/Jade Wire Shrub

Life in a Zoo the Fictional Version: Freddy and Puddy

Some months after we had met our first live pot-bellied pigs, we heard about a pair in Virginia needing a home. They were a male and female, two years old. They had produced one litter, then the owner had neutered them. These pigs were black, the original color.

It seems the black ones were no longer in vogue and people were breeding for white or spotted pigs. So goes the way of novelty pets.  People get them for the novelty and then cast them aside when the novelty wears off. Fortunately for Freddy and Puddy, I was willing to drive eight hours one-way to give them a home!

Life in a Zoo: The Real Thing- Ping Comes into Our Life

It just so happened that we had a veterinary student from Auburn University volunteering one day. While she was there, one of our setting geese had a heat stroke and went into seizures.  Although quick action saved her life, her nest had been destroyed.

“What a shame,” I shook my head as I cleaned out the nest and tossed the crushed eggs into a trashcan.  I picked up an egg and examined it.  “I think there must be a baby inside, but the shell is cracked.

Writing Craft: What is a Character?

What are characters?

• They are the individuals with whom you people your universe. Without them, there is no story. They either do things or things are done to them.

Writing Craft: Conflict

Without conflict there is no story, just a news report. 

Boring.

Life in a Zoo: The Fictional Version- Sweetie's Blackest Moment

When writing a story, at some point the main character must go through a devastating event. It is called the Black Moment. The writer must bring the character to the height of hope and expectation. Then some horrible thing happens that makes it seem like the end of the world.  Now the character must recover from that experience.

Life in a Zoo: The Real Thing - How a Goose Hatches Her Eggs

I was amazed at how many eggs my geese were laying.  Several geese laid their eggs inside an abandoned doghouse. Apparently, it was prime real estate.

We were such novices in those days, and it was long before we ever owned a computer, much less had access to the internet.  So our resources on learning about our critters was limited. 

What I didn’t understand was that I should have taken some of those eggs.  But we left them all.  It didn’t take long before there were so many eggs in the nest that the goose couldn’t possibly reach the ones on the bottom, much less turn them several times a day as was needed.
 
Usually a bird will lay only one egg a day, depending on the species. Emus will lay one egg every three days. The bird will not begin to incubate the eggs until the nest is full. For some species, that may be two or three eggs, but for some birds, like the emu, they may have fifteen or twenty eggs in the nest.  Geese will usually lay about eight to ten.
 
There is one of God’s wonderful mysteries. So if a goose lays an egg a day for ten days, why is it that they all hatch on the same day?