Where Rex Roosts

Claude shook the egg gently. He didn't hear anything. He shook again, this time a little harder, but still didn’t hear anything. Maybe it’s just suspended in the yoke and not hitting the walls, he thought. He grabbed the rest of the eggs, put them in the basket, and headed back to the house.In the kitchen, his mother was emptying the dishwasher.

“How many did they give ya?” she asked.

“8 today” Claude said, pausing to show her.

“Wow honey, almost twice as many as they were laying last month.”

“Yeah.”

“That's great,” she continued “you’ll certainly win the fair this year.”

Claude half smiled and started for his room.

“Make sure they go in the fridge when you're done, Claude,” his mother hollered after him.

Claude shut his door, flicked on the powerful light, and, one by one, set the eggs over the light. He had learned how to candle eggs from his grandfather, when he had still lived with them. His grandfather had patiently taught him how to hold the eggs up to the light and spot the faint red mass inside the eggs. A uniform glow meant the egg hadn’t been fertilized but a faint red spot meant that Rex had been successful. Claude patiently candled each of the 8 eggs, recording the results in his small black notebook.

He had been studying the eggs almost every day for 11 months now. His grandfather had helped him design the experiment and make a list of the variables he could adjust. He had made the list on the first page of the black notebook; time of day Rex could mate with the hens, moon phase, calcium carbonate added to diet, chitin added to diet, and collagen added to diet. Every week Claude had methodically adjusted each variable and recorded the results in the black notebook. When his parents asked him about it he had told them about how he was adjusting the diets in order to raise the percentage of fertilized chicken eggs and that he was going to use his data for the school science fair.

But that was only a half-truth. He and his grandfather were after much more than a few more fertilized eggs.

After Claude made his notes he put his notebook back into the desk drawer, put the eggs in the refrigerator and signed into his computer just in time for his first class with Miss Poole. Staring at the computer was dreadfully boring as Miss Poole droned on about the angles in a triangle summing to 180. School work had always come easily to Claude. When he was younger his parents had told him that he was just so lucky to have inherited his grandfather's wits, but as he got older the comments came less and less often. As he aged, his grandfather's health declined and he became more and more obsessed with the fantastic and paranormal, and what Claude’s parents called “grotesque conspiracy theories”. His grandfather would often tell Claude about experiments he did on the dairy farm he grew up on before he moved away for a job at Bell Labs. It wasn’t long before Claude’s parents had had enough. They deemed his grandfather a bad influence on a promising young mind, and moved the frail old man to Rose Acres where he was heavily medicated. Claude’s experiment with the chickens was all that he had left to remember his beloved grandfather and so it became somewhat of an obsession.

“Claude, please turn your camera on, I have an announcement,” Miss Poole said, snapping Claude out of his daydream. He tilted his head back up to look at the screen. “I know everyone will be excited to hear that we have officially gotten approval to re-open schools on April 1st, and I hope everyone has been working diligently on their science fair projects, because we will be kicking off the new month with the science fair presentations. Many important people will be there to judge. The superintendent is a judge this year as well as Jimmy’s Uncle who is coming up all the way from Los Alamos”

Claude hadn’t known that in-person school was on the horizon and the news made his experiment all the more urgent. When they stopped for lunch Claude went out to the coop and took a look at Rex The Rooster. Rex was getting on in years, but he was still strong, and proud, and virile. “Well Rex,” Claude said heavily, “we’ve only got a few more tries at this”

The ground was soggy with melted snow as Claude walked through the front yard to the car. His mom was waiting in the driver's seat with the engine running.

“You got everything?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Claude said as he put his poster board and presentation materials into the back seat of the old Volvo. He was nervous not only about going back to in-person school for the first time in a year, but also to present the results of his experiment. The school felt strange and unfamiliar,though Claude had attended classes here since the first grade. Everyone was excited to be back, and the auditorium was roaring with chatter. Claude sheepishly greeted a few of his classmates and found his spot on a folding table. He carefully set up his posterboard, arranged the informational materials, and plugged in his candling light. After a few more minutes of utter chaos, the adults yelled and threatened until they gained control of the room.

Then, the presentations started.

To Claude’s dismay, the judging began at the opposite end of the auditorium, so he had to wait, nervously shifting his weight from leg to leg, as each of his classmates gave their own weak and unoriginal presentations.

Finally, the judges arrived at his table and formed a tired semicircle around him.

“Good morning,” Claude began, gathering himself.

“Today, I’d like to tell you about a novel experiment I have been working on for the better part of a year. The school cancellations really gave me the opportunity to pursue this experiment with the vigor that it deserves”

The judges looked on with little interest.

“I set out to achieve a great and never before seen feat of biological engineering. I have what I believe to be the greatest discovery of animal husbandry since the domestication of the egg-laying hen. Through trial and error I have attained the holy grail of ovum technology.”

Claude could tell the semi-circle of adults were frowning under their masks except for one strange looking man towards the back of the group.

“Get to the point, son” the school superintendent said

“Right” said Claude “by harnessing the scientific method I have achieved what many of you may think impossible. I have grown the largest, perfectly round natural pearl to ever grace this Earth, and, no less ,I have done it a thousand miles away from any ocean.”

Claude held up an egg

“Inside of this egg I have grown a pearl exactly 40 mm in diameter. I have found the secret formula. I can create perfect, natural pearls formed around the ovum of a chicken’s egg, and I can do it with great consistency.”

With a flash of showmanship, Claude cracked the egg on the table. The shell fell away, egg whites oozed out, and in the middle of the egg where the yoke should have been, sat an enormous glistening pearl.

“And, I have 9 more like it,” Claude said, proudly gesturing to the basket of eggs on the table.

“This is preposterous! He's a fraud,” a voice in the crowd shouted.

“How did you do it, boy?” the superintendent said half amused.

“Well, it involved a lot of trial and error — that's why my grandfather and I used chickens. Because they lay an egg almost everyday. First, we made a list of variables that we could adjust —like the amount of calcium carbonate and collagen in the chicken feed. Then we adjusted the time of day Rex can fertilize the eggs. If the rest of the world could see Rex mate, he would soon be world famous. I expect he soon will be. Anyway, I started by adding extra chitin and collagen to the chicken feed, but that just made the egg shells thicker. Then, I changed Rex’s mating schedule to the afternoons — about 2:30. And that change, paired with a waxing moon, boosted the successful fertilization to a rate of about 88%.”

Claude pointed to a graph on his poster board.

“But that still wasn’t producing pearls, so I thought of what my grandpa might do.That’s when it came to me. Oysters only make pearls as a mechanism to protect themselves from a physical irritant. So it was simple, I just needed to present a physical irritant to the fertilized egg.

So, I took a chopstick and dipped it in a tiny bit of honey, then I carefully placed a single small grain of sand on the honey and took it outside. The cold air quickly hardened the honey so that the grain of sand would stay put. Then, after Rex had finished, and the hen lay there in euphoric shock I carefully placed the grain of sand in the fertilized egg, the honey softens in the warmth and only the grain is left. This is all before the shell forms of cou...”

“This is an abomination,” Miss Poole exclaimed “those poor chickens!”

“You have committed crimes against nature, young man.” another judge said solemnly

Claude stood there looking, as the group of judges shook their heads in disgust and disapproval, and adjourned.

All of them except for one man. The stranger that Claude had seen at the back of the group remained in place. He was well dressed in a sleek black suit with oiled hair, and large buck teeth.

“My boy,” the man said softly, “you have certainly achieved a great triumph. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Leroy Robert Ripply the fourth. My great great grandfather was an avid collector of the strange and fantastic, and he became quite famous showcasing these delights in his Odditoriums all over the world.He certainly had quite the penchant for the unusual. I plan to restore these galleries of the absurd to their former glory. I would like to purchase these bizarre egg-pearls for a very generous sum of money — perhaps..hmm say 20,000 dollars?” He ran his tongue over his buck teeth.

Claude stood for a moment contemplating the offer.

His lips parted into a smile, and his hand unconsciously reached to the little black book stowed in his back pocket.