My office phone rang 15 minutes before my next meeting. It was my wife and she sounded concerned.

“I just started hard-boiling some eggs, and…is it possible that there could be a chick inside one of the eggs?”

My brain can’t begin to comprehend what she’s trying to ask me. All I could muster was an incredulous, “What?”

“I’m hard-boiling a dozen eggs and I hear chirping.”

Now I’m really frozen.

“There are tiny bubbles coming out of one of the eggs – could it just be the bubbles making the sound?”

Speechless. I have no words.

“SAM – I NEED YOU TO TELL ME THIS ISN’T POSSIBLE!!”

“Honey,” I barely muster, still reeling at the notion of my wife boiling an unborn chick alive. “Honey – I don’t know! I can’t even begin to deal with this right now!”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say! You’re supposed to tell me it’s not possible!!”

I shake my head – totally unaware that I’m doing so – and consider the facts. Chickens come from eggs. We bought eggs at the store on Sunday. I’ve never come across a baby chick in a carton of eggs before. I’m starting to feel better. Let’s check Google to see if I’m right. I search “is it possible to hear chirping inside an unbroken chicken egg?” By far the oddest thing I’ve Googled to this point in my life. The results – yes. Yes, you can hear chirping from inside an unbroken chicken egg. I start feeling ill.

But…c’mon. The egg is under water. There’s no way the sound of chirping, if that’s in fact what my wife is hearing, could be audible from under water. Right? RIGHT?!?

“Well, I’m not eating any of these eggs now. Besides, I made them for you,” she tells me.

Check back with me in a few days to see if one of my breakfasts (and subsequently, lunch and dinner) is ruined by a hard-boiled chicken corpse. ♦