The runniness of my morning egg triggered a rumbling in my memory banks.
On our way home from India, in the mid 60’s, we went the Pacific route, with specific destinations connected to my parents’ humanitarian work.
Little beknownst to my parents, my brother, Dave, (16) had plunged deeper into his obsession with snakes and I was his Watson…cheerfully and dutifully, and we had missions of our own. Because we had grown up in boarding school without parents, we were self sufficient and this was known. ‘Just be back in time for dinner.’
Therefore in Delhi, as one of the last stops in India, Dave and I scooted off to an animal distributor that he had heard about. When we arrived at the location, a house was being demolished because an elephant had died in the bedroom. Never the less, we successfully acquired what we came for and left the establishment with two baby pythons in little mesh bags. Dave named them Helga and Susie, after two gorgeous Austrian sisters in our school.
From Delhi, the family went north to Kashmir, across to Burma, Thailand, Hong Kong, and then Japan….. institutions and meetings along the way while Dave and I foraged for food in the markets for Helga and Susie, mice, to be specific, with no luck. Incredible. This was a problem.
Helga and Susie travelled from country to country in their little bags in the bottom of my straw purse, covered with pencils and hankies. By the time we got to Japan they were in starvation mode, and then bingo! We found a couple of mice! After locking them all in the bathroom together, we discovered that the snakes were so listless that this was not going to work.
What now?
Eggs. Medicine droppers. Eggs. New plan. After a day of excavating for raw eggs in the markets, no luck. Now we needed to rally in support from the whole family. My dad came up with a plan. Oh Dad, I love you!
Dad had been a Japanese interpreter during WW2 and spoke fluent Japanese. Thank goodness!
We all went down for breakfast to the dining room of the hotel and sat around a table, and for breakfast (Dad explained this to the waiter in Japanese, much to the waiter’s incredulity) ordered one raw egg for each of us, in the shell. Dad sat at the head of the table facing the window that led into the kitchen. When the eggs were delivered, as we asked, there were crowded faces in the kitchen window, trying to see what these strange Americans were going to do with raw eggs in the shells. Dad instructed us, that in the moments when they were shuffling themselves behind the window to give everyone a chance to look, and the window was empty, that he would say “NOW”, and at that moment one person at a time was to put egg in lap under napkin.
So hilarious words cannot suffice. The expressions of wonderment, amazement, awe, in these window faces as the eggs disappeared one by one with no muss or fuss in the bowls…. AND one must note the phenomenal self control we all had, not to show one sign of glee or victory on our faces.
The end of this story?
Mission accomplished. Helga and Susie had raw egg medicine dropped down their throats and after Hawaii and California and Des Moines, and NYC and a few more trials, they moved into the private collection of the curator of reptiles at the Bronx Zoo.