bounty, cagey.

deposited at my front doorstep the other day: a giant carton of cherry tomatoes and bittermelon. whooo! what to do, what to do.

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also deposited: a bunch of eggs. i have to laugh whenever i buy those cage-free, free-range, battery-free, antibiotic-free, donovan-listening eggs at the market. i have a few friends with errant chickens, which are empirically without cage and battery, conforming to every stereotype about the bird you may have ever thought: they cross the road to get to the other side, they run around even with their heads cut off (srsly? so freakin' weird), and are as free as. no one is actually sure where they've come from--probably another yard in the neighbourhood--but no one comes around to claim them, and certainly none of my friends actually feed them. they know how to fend for themselves, surely.

i don't really know all that much about chickens, but i was under some assumption that eggs were usually dropped in a nest or at least in a sheltered area and roughly in the same area. however, the eggs pictured above are much like all the ones collected from various folk: randomly deposited on window sills, doorsteps, flowerpots, but mostly in driveways--coral rock, conrete, brick, dirt, clay....they seem to like the open expanse and playing chicken (! ha) with the cars coming in or out. the ones out of the way are mostly left alone, because of uncertainty of age, although some folk are partial to penoy, which are fertilized eggs which fail to hatch. personally, i think it's an open invitation for snakes (leaving eggs around the yard, not the penoy per se). the driveway ones are collected and distributed for consumption. i haven't really participated in the handouts because, well, i as a lifelong storebought egg consumer, am still a bit suspect of the driveway eggs. sure they are collected pretty quickly, but temperatures reach 80˚F or more by mid-morning regularly, and i'm not the one collecting the eggs. i know i should get over it, so i've started to get my share, but only for hard boiling purposes until i am more comfortable with the idea (i'm not worried about salmonella, but i figure a cracked/bad egg is easier to deal with once boiled).

i'm sure i wouldn't be so cagey if someone told me these had come from their lovely little farm with the red barn and the cow named bessie, i should be thrilled i'm getting fresh and free ones from the lovely little subdivision with the concrete house and the car named camry.

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almost speaking of snakes, i came home from manila at 5am, opened up the bedroom door to find a snake slithering underneath the bed. after a little bit of a freak out, i went looking for it, to find...nothing. so after a few days of careful peering and not reaching into handbags too hastily, i was happy to find one of the dogs inadvertently stepping on what i originally thought was an electrical cord but turned out to be an irate and desperate snake. mostly dead (yay dog! although she is traumatized from the incident), so it was finished off with a whack of a nine iron. before animal rights folks get after me, i have to point out that the brown tree snake is non-native to the island, invasive, and has decimated the native bird population. "ecological disaster" is not too strong a phrase. so, although i find my golf club whacking ways troubling, i also think it's necessary. the thing is...the dead snake is not same one seen slithering under the bed. #$%^.