Egg Soup

On Thursday evening of last week, we sat down with the three Heathens to dye Easter eggs. Three dozen eggs, ten cups of vinegar-smelling dye, two wire egg dippers, a spoon, and LOTS of paper towels. I had the best evening.

Heathens #1 and #2 use the white crayon including in the kits and they decorate all of their eggs. Each one is unique - and in the case of Heathen #1 - has it's own name. Heathen #3 just gets an "L" on each of his to identify them. I'm not much for drawing.

Heathens #1 and #2 are self sufficient at this point when it comes to dying Easter eggs. The only job that the Asst. Zookeeper and I have at this stage is to sit at the same table and make "oooo" noises of being impressed. Heathen #3 is still a little more hands-on at this point. But this year, he declared that he "do it all my byself!" And so he did... And I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time.

He didn't understand the concept of putting in one egg at a time. His coloring cups always had AT LEAST two eggs a piece. And he smashed them down with his hands to keep them under the water.

Usually, the Heathens only break one or two eggs during this process. This year, they broke ALL of them, except one of two. Heathen #3 kept smacking them on the table. The other two kept dropping them. I even dropped one at one point - right onto the cat that happened to be walking under the edge of the table. Thank heavens she isn't white!

All the egg dying only took about an hour. We had a lot of muddy colored eggs at the end of the process. Heathen #3 had blue hands from the wrists to his finger tips. Heathen #2 spilled the cup of blue dye - which ran across the table and splashed onto the dining room floor. Thank heavens we have hardwood floors and it was easy to clean up!

One of the last eggs that Heathen #3 dyed was broken before it even went into the coloring cup. He proceeded to make egg soup with it in the pink dye. After coloring eggs now at our zoo for 11 years - this was still a first for us!