Emilie’s Tail

I’d taken my new boyfriend, the future Mr McG, to spend the weekend at my parents’ in Normandy.

My mother kept chickens and my daughter, L, aged 4, was tasked with collecting the eggs.

She found a perfect white spherical egg that day and begged to be allowed to keep it. We agreed and her wee face lit up.

She rode the whole way back to Paris, clutching the egg in her hot little hands. But disaster struck on arrival. So focused was she when she got out of the car that she walked smack into a lamp-post, and cracked it. The egg, not the lamp-post, you fools.

Heartbreaking sobs erupted, but a bandaid was quickly produced, the egg stuck together like humpty dumpty and laid (harhar) to rest in a nest of cotton wool beside her bed.

The next day, the future Mr McG was dispatched to purchase something, anything, to distract. He returned with a hamster in a cage.

I hadn’t meant THAT sort of anything.

But i put on a brave face and when L came home from school, she rushed to her room and was soon jumping up and down shouting excitedly: “It’s hatched! It’s hatched!”

Thus Emilie joined the family.

To this day, L confuses chickens with hamsters.

I know. But you’d’ve done the same.

Chicken Little (www.zandrascreations.com)