Cher in Florence

(Warning: This post has absolutely nothing to do with Florence.)

The other afternoon I came home from the supermarket and discovered this in my egg carton:

I was disturbed and in awe at the same time. A strange sensation. An egg’s not supposed to have hair. Sweet, white, beautiful hair, presumably from a baby chick. Immediately I thought:

1. A chick is trying to get out of the egg.
2. A chick lost hair trying to escape. It must have hurt.
3. Of that surreallist fur-covered cup. But the naturalist version.
4. What does it mean to eat an egg?
5. I don’t want to eat babies, or any form of pre-baby.
6. How can pro-lifers justify eating eggs?
7. I shouldn’t eat eggs. Ever.
8. When does life begin?
9. What was a chick doing near a hen laying this egg?
10. What if it’s not a chick but this is a hen’s hair?
11. What if I opened it?
    

I placed the egg back in the carton and put it on the counter near the sink. I can’t throw it away. I can’t eat it. I warmed up some leftover linguini with onions and tomato sauce on the stove. I walked over and picked up the egg again. I lifted it up and showed my roommate who was on the patio, smoking. She scream-laughed and said she wanted to take a picture of it. I put it back. It was almost too much to look at.

The pan crackled and the onions and tomato sauce reeked a little, somewhere between burnt and sweet. I looked over at the carton, and suddenly remembered driving in Harrisonburg, Virginia, with a sales rep years ago to visit a printing plant. The town is home to the Perdue chicken plant as well, and it being hot and windy that day, the sales rep kindly told me to close the car window because the odor might bother me. Before she’d said anything, I smelled it; it was pungent, overwhelming, putrid. My imagination raced to figure out what part smelled, exactly. I could only think of death. I think she said it was chicken feces or guts.

And so, here in Florence, as the sauce and onions simmered on the stove, my association with the egg and the Purdue plant recalled that smell, and it was all one. I could actually imagine that the smell was coming from the egg. Which of course, wasn’t true, but the olfactory sense is our strongest. Wrap it up with memory, and you have a freaky experience.

But the question is, why is the sight of this egg with hair so disturbing?

It’s too real. It’s like seeing a cow’s hair on a slab of beef wrapped in cellophane. I don’t want to be reminded of the connection of my food to a once-living creature. Because I imagine this:

(from http://www.poultryclub.org/Incubation.htm)

But really, ignorance of the facts is the second reason. I did some “research,” that is, I looked online, to find some answers.

1. A chick is trying to get out of the egg.
   No chick can break out of an egg while in an egg carton, because the eggs I buy at the grocery store are unfertlized, which means I’m not eating embryos when I fry up an egg.
2. What does it mean to eat an egg?
   This requires a much longer answer, because even if what I am eating is “okay,” there are moral issues that come up when you think about taking an (even unfertilized) egg from a hen. At an egg farm, an animal is sacrificing its life to this production and this production only. Yes, some egg farms let their hens wander around in meadows (like the one, actually, where the above egg came from), but many egg farms treat their hens reprehensibly.For some of us, there is something instinctively that pulls at us to wonder if we have the right to take eggs from a hen. (I am now thinking of and point you to an excellent essay by the late David Foster Wallace, “Consider the Lobster,” which explores the moral ramifications of “boiling a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure.”) My mother grew up on a farm north of Boston, and every morning it was her job to collect the eggs from the hens. But she could never eat them. It was only after she moved out of that house that she could stomach eating eggs because they came from a grocery store, so the link was broken.The other night I told a former chef about this egg with the hair, and he admitted he always feels uncomfortable eating eggs and he doesn’t exactly know why.So the reason why we can enjoy a fennel, mushroom, and brie omelette is because we simply don’t have to think about it. The association is too far removed.
3. I don’t want to eat babies, or any form of pre-baby.
   Eggs are not pre-babies, but contain the nutrients necessary in the yolk that a chick would enjoy if the egg were fertilized. Instead, we enjoy it.
4. How can pro-lifers justify eating eggs?
   Easy; they’re not eating embryos, or anything like it.
5. I shouldn’t eat eggs. Ever.
   If I shouldn’t eat eggs, then it’s because of the nasty and cruel hatchery conditions, not because I’m eating unborn babies.
6. When does life begin?
   . . . . I won’t tackle this here.
7. What was a chick doing near a hen laying this egg?
   This will remain a mystery.
8. What if it’s not a chick but this is a hen’s hair?
   This is strange, because the egg is brown, and I’ve read that only brown hens lay brown eggs. So where did the white hair come from?
9. What if I opened it?
   I would eat a delicious egg, I think.

So, that covers the idiot mind and the reasonable mind. But still, there’s something else. It’s not just a safety issue or a moral issue; it’s about eating a symbol. Our collective consciousness is filled with eggs: the egg as a symbol for birth, rebirth (resurrection of Christ), death, nature, sex; they are dyed red to symbolize the blood of Christ, they are so powerful we hide them once a year. All of this is subconsciously working when we hold an egg in our hand, in a way that is different from when we eat a turkey breast or a hamburger. It’s the nexus of life. No egg, no life.

Also, eggs are vulnerable. Snakes eat them; they fall and break. So, the sweet, white baby hair just adds to the vulnerability and so I instantly feel guilty and sympathetic with that poor creature who left its precious hair behind.

Now the question is, do I dare crack it?