The most private thing in the world.

Yesterday, I was out on a bike ride and glimpsed a couple of peacocks wandering the grounds of Saint John the Divine. It was pretty neat.

Today, I biked down to the Union Square greenmarket for rapini and whatever else looked good, which included late-season plums, hand soap, small pears, and goose eggs.

Yes. Goose eggs. The plural, because I got three of them.

The stand which rarely has those but often has turkey and duck eggs had a big wire basket of unwashed duck eggs out, and I wandered over to look at them. Except I could tell, just from the size of it, that one was different from the rest. Quite a bit bigger. Then I picked it up, and I had a full-body shiver, because I knew that texture. I knew that shell. The living porcelain texture.

I told the merchant how I'd saved the shells of the other goose eggs I'd bought - the old technique of making two holes and blowing the egg out, though I scrambled the eggs inside the shell with a big sewing needle first - which he said was ingenious of me. We talked a bit about various ways to cook them, and I figure since I've already got three shells on a shelf, I don't necessarily need to save more, and it'd be fun to properly fry a goose egg in really good butter.

But they're such beautiful shells, maybe I ought to take advantage of the rare opportunity to add to the collection.