The Egg Heist
by Mark Matlock
I had just returned from school, but the smell of scrambled eggs in the air made me think I’d entered the wrong house. First of all, the Matlocks only ate breakfast food in the morning. And second, nobody in our house really liked eggs, especially the way my mom made them. (Sorry, Mom.) Why then was my mom cooking eggs?
Mom explained: “Jonathan (my brother) and Paul (my brother’s friend), found these eggs in the field (the acre of property behind our house). They asked me to cook them.”
As she spoke, she pointed to seven eggs sitting on the counter. I know that harvesting eggs from a vacant field sounds outrageous, but it was possible. Behind our field was a chicken ranch. We often encountered partial chickens in our yard who had escaped only to be eaten by our dogs. But we had never found eggs.
Immediately I went to the field in search of more eggs. I combed the entire area and found not one. Surely, my six-year-old brother had not discovered every mislaid egg from the field. I raised an eyebrow. Now I was suspicious.
I walked into the house where my brother and his corrupt little friend (or is that fiend?) sat feasting on eggs with bacon bits.
“Look guys,” I said to them. “I’ll give you a dollar for every egg you bring me.”
Jonathan’s eyes said’ “no,” but Paul couldn’t refuse the opportunity. “We’ll see what we can do,” he promised.
I climbed on top of our house to observe them in the field. Then I saw what I suspected to be true—Jonathan and Paul climbed the fence to the chicken ranch. They were stealing the eggs!
The little thieves checked to see if the coast was clear, then entered a row of chicken coops. But what I saw from the roof they could not see—the owner of the ranch coming from the other side of the building to catch them!
As my brother and his pal turned to head for home, the man shouted, causing them to drop their haul. With terror in their eyes, they ran across the field to the house. “Why are you running so fast?” my mom was asking them as I came down the stairs.
“A big dog chased us to the house!”
Busted.
That’s when I felt obligated to share what I had observed from the roof.
My mother sent the egg bandits to apologize to the owner.
Proverbs 9:17 states, “stolen water is sweet,” warning us of the thrill (and the fatal consequences) of taking something wrongfully. My brother never really liked eggs until the day of the great egg heist. And he’s never liked them since.