Today's oneword:

I used to have to gather eggs from our chickens every day. We had a silver wire basket that you would put the eggs in after risking life and limb to remove them from the hen they belonged to.

This is autobiographical. Gathering eggs was my least favorite part of the barn chores, since I was slightly afraid of and hugely grossed out by the chickens. They were noisy, dirty animals who more often than not attacked me for taking their eggs. (And rightly so, I always thought.) I had special egg gathering sticks that I would use, kind of like giant chopsticks, to lift the hens and toss them out of the nesting boxes. I would then gather the still warm eggs and place tham in the aforementioned basket. It was a round basket with a springy things wrapped around the handle. You could smoosh the spring all the way over to one side and then let it go shooting across to the other. There were usually a dozen or so eggs in that basket, sitting on our kitchen counter. My friends would see the eggs, pale blue, light green and tan, and ask me where they came from. "What are they like on the inside?" they would wonder. My friends all lived in town and probably thought eggs were made by machines in the back of the grocery store. My mom still has chickens and they still lay colorful eggs. I still dislike the chickens. Luckily, I no longer have to deal with them on a daily basis.