It was dawn on Easter Sunday, and me and the two ‘golden boys’ – Pasha the Golden Retriever, and Sammy the Greek Kokoni – were on our usual early morning walk. All was quiet, the sun was rising, a light mist lay on the ground, and the dawn chorus was a veritable cacophony.
We came to the field we cut through on the way to the local golf course and, knowing the field well, in the distance I spotted an unexpected large, round, white object. Curiously I approached it, wondering what it might be, while Pasha and Sammy sniffed around in the field, tracking the recent nocturnal activity.
As I approached the object I saw what it was – a goose egg. It must have been taken from one of the geese in the neighbouring field by a fox, and abandoned for some reason in this field. “Breakfast!” I thought to myself – in the past the farmer has given me the occasional goose egg, and they make a lovely creamy omelette. But on closer inspection I saw the egg was a bit dirty, and as I knew some of the geese were sitting on eggs I thought that eating it was a little risky as its freshness might be dubious.
So I picked the egg up and threw it into the bushes, to avoid Pasha – who is a typical Golden Retriever guzzler of anything and everything – finding it. But I was too late! He had clearly already picked up the scent and saw me lob it into the distance and, with a speed and dexterity rarely seen unless food is concerned, he managed to find the egg, get his mouth around it and bring it out of the bushes, where he promptly lay down on the grass with the egg between his front paws.
Knowing it was useless to try to get anything so tasty away from Pasha, I watched as he cleverly managed to break a hole in the top of the egg, and gradually insert his tongue into the egg to extract the goodness; this being interspersed with occasional crunches as he ate the thick eggshell (an excellent source of calcium!)
I could only smile to myself as I realised that on Easter Sunday this was Pasha’s perfect Easter egg! A goose egg is about the size of three chicken eggs, and with a weight of 27 kg, Pasha must have eaten the equivalent of half a dozen chicken eggs in one sitting.. but fortunately with no side effects!