One way to deal with snakes that eat your chicken eggs is to put wooden eggs in the nesting boxes of your chicken coop. But, if you do so, remember to tell your neighbor that there are wooden eggs along with the freshly laid eggs. Otherwise, when she watches your chickens, she may collect and refrigerate them along with real eggs to only find out later she can’t cook with them. That happened to our sweet neighbor when she first watched our place. That would have been a good prank! But, it wasn’t – we just forgot to tell her about them and why they were there. Our franch guests who do chores alongside the children are often surprised to learn the wooden egg trick to kill snakes. The other evening we were giving a barn tour to a remarkably mannerly, sophisticated, and accomplished family. I had reminded my children throughout the day to be on their best behavior. We had all followed my son out to the chicken coop and us adults were engrossed in a conversation about the farm-to-table growing trend. My son appeared in the doorway of the chicken coop with two eggs in hand, yelled “catch,” and immediately threw them in our direction aiming at our feet. We all stared in disbelief at our son who is known as a very polite, respectful, and kind young man. It happened too fast for any of us to react. One egg landed on the ground with a thud. The other broke open with the egg yoke and white splattering on the ground before us. It was a prank that had gone wrong. My son thought he had thrown two wooden eggs our way. A look of horror had come over my son’s face when that egg broke. My husband immediately knew what my son had intended and started laughing. You see, my husband thinks he’s quite funny and is working very hard to pass on his humor to our children. I read the great classics to my children like Little House on the Prairie, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Secret Garden while my husband shows the kids silly scenes from movies he calls “classics” like Tommy Boy, Three Amigos, and Talladega Nights. It’s no surprise that my husband loved the prank, and, more so, how it went wrong. My son wasn’t laughing though, he felt awful. Our amused guests said they could forgive but never forget the wooden egg prank gone wrong.
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