I don't want any more children. Especially feathered ones.

I happened to glance out our back door late yesterday afternoon and noticed something small and pale sitting on the ground near one of our feeders. It was a turkey egg, and all I can surmise is that one of the hens that regularly visits the back yard either just couldn't hold it or else picked the worst spot ever to scratch out a nest and start laying.

It's not unusual to run across turkey nests this time of year. Most of the hens have been bred and started nesting. It is, however, unusual to find a random egg laying a few feet from our back door.

Looking down at the egg, I had a dilemma: if I just left the egg there it wouldn't last the night. Maybe I should just pick it up and make an omelet. If I didn't the neighborhood racoons or opossums surely would. Plus, it might very well be an infertile egg anyway, and better me eat it than some other nest predator. Not to mention the fact that if a hen was trying to nest there it was doomed to failure. It's literally a few feet from our back door. The local hens are used to humans, but they're by no means tame and she'd be running off the nest every time we opened the door.

On the other hand, if a hen's nesting somewhere nearby maybe I can find the nest and slip the egg into it. If I can't, then my son - visions of a pet gobbler running through his head - is already pestering me to try to incubate and hatch it.

And if it does hatch - a long, long, shot - then what on earth are we going to do with a pet turkey? Hell, I haven't even shot one yet this year!

Honestly, I'd rather just eat it because the odds of hatching a single turkey egg - if it's even fertile -  are extremely low, but I'm afraid the die has been cast: If I can't find a nest to slip this thing into we'll put it under a lamp and see what happens, though I think I'm ruining a perfectly good breakfast...