Eggspectations

Oatmeal seemed like the logical choice for breakfast on a canoe trip - it's light, packable and as grandma would say, "It sticks to your ribs." I like oatmeal but, after eating it for a few weeks, I wasn't stomaching the idea that it was the perfect breakfast food. I tried to make the oatmeal more appetizing by adding dried cranberries, blueberries, mango, raisins, almonds or peanut butter however, it still tasted like the same old oatmeal. What I really wanted for breakfast was eggs. Every morning my thoughts turned to omelet's, eggs Benedict or toad-in-the-hole. It didn't help that we had to paddle through a cluster of islands called the chickens. After paddling 40 kilometers one day, Jon and I stopped for a break at Hen Island. To our surprise and complete irony, one egg, brown in colour, was lying in the water on the sand beside our canoe. I picked up the egg and it appeared roughly the same size as a chicken's egg. We couldn't identify what type of bird could have laid such and egg or how old it was. I wanted to crack it open into a hot sizzling pan but my heart prevented me from doing so. I placed the egg into some low lying bushes and we paddled away. The next morning, to my dismay, we ate oatmeal yet again.