Eggs Before Breakfast

Morning light sat soft on the Mount Mee coop. Spike sat softer. Suzy sat ready.

Before breakfast, said Spike, we count eggs. Counting is a farm job. We do not guess.

Suzy peered into the nest boxes. One egg. Two eggs. Three eggs. She tapped each with a careful paw tip — not hard. Soft eye. Soft count.

Pavlova the white chicken sat on the roof edge and looked queenly, as if the eggs were her idea. The brown hens murmured. Quails did their leave-and-come-back and then stayed counted.

Spike put on his Thinking Cap feeling — not magic, just the Puppy School habit. Stop. Look. Think. How many eggs are in the box?

Four, said Suzy. Then she found one more under the straw. Five!

Five eggs before breakfast, Spike nodded. We counted. We checked. We did not invent eggs.

Suzy grinned. If we had said six without looking, that would be a story egg, not a farm egg.

They carried the count to the feed bay in their heads — five — and told you the number out loud so you could count with them.

Count with us next time, they said. One clean number. One honest breakfast.

Count first. Breakfast after.