What is Stealing Your Eggs?

A few weeks ago, one of my chickens, Lone Ranger, died. Ever since, the other two (Thelma and Louise) haven’t laid any eggs. Or so I thought.

I figured maybe they were in mourning. Or that the change in their environment had caused them to stop laying for a spell. “Chickens don’t lay all the time,” I was told. They probably just aren’t laying right now.

I even had to resort to buying eggs on Monday at the local farmers market. I said to the chickens, “Why am I buying eggs if I have the two of you?”

But I had a suspicion there was something else in the mix.

Not far from the chicken coop is the pomegranate tree, surrounded by a rock wall. A ground squirrel lives in that wall. In the past, when there were no eggs, I realized he had managed to El Chapo-style tunnel under the coop, busting through the chicken wire floor to gain entry to a daily breakfast buffet.

Despite my best efforts at El Chapo-proofing, I suspected the squirrel was at it again. I hadn’t seen him, but I knew the signs. Then, yesterday, while sitting on the patio, I counted not one, but five squirrels in the yard, as though on a stakeout for their huevos rancheros. I caught one red-handed inside the coop. I quickly shut the door to test my theory: if he managed to escape, I would know the tunnels had been reactivated.

Sure enough—no squirrel.

I got to work. A long piece of plywood, three cinder blocks, and several shovels of dirt later, I had the coop secured. In the meantime, the chickens were hanging out in the garden. When I went to find Thelma (or Louise, I really can’t tell them apart) under the cover of some yard tools, there I found it: one perfect, speckled brown egg.

Aha! Victory. The chickens were actually laying—I just had a thief in the coop.

And, me being me, it made me wonder: How often do we go through life with something stealing our eggs?

People might say, “Oh, don’t worry about it, you’re just in a stage. It will pass. Not all of life is creative or productive.” And with chickens—and life—that is true. There are seasons for dormancy.

But there are also times when we are laying our eggs, but the holes in the coop allow them to be squandered before they can be enjoyed. It is like having the heater on full blast with all the windows wide open.

We can spend our time decrying the lack of eggs, or we can do the “dirt under your fingernails” work of closing the tunnels.

Here’s the thing about the holes—the “tunnels” in our own lives are rarely grand catastrophes.

They are the small, quiet drains on our attention—the mindless scrolling, the people-pleasing “yeses,” the habit of smoothing the ice for everyone else while our own spirit wilts. We think we’ve lost our magic, our productivity, or our peace. But the truth is, we are still “laying.” We’ve just had the heater on with the windows open.

It might be tempting to think that in order to reclaim those drains we need to get rid of everything that squanders—to “kill the squirrels.”

But the reality is, we don’t need to go around whack-a-mole style in life to everything that is squandering our creative juices. We just need to secure the coop.

We mend the fence. We do the work, getting our hands dirty with the cinder blocks, the dirt, and the plywood—small, sovereign acts—so that when the egg arrives, we can actually enjoy it.

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A Note on Securing the Coop...

If you’ve been feeling like your heater is on but the windows are wide open—if you sense that your attention, your energy, or your peace is being “tunneled into” by the noise of the world—I’d love for you to join me for The Return.

Beginning May 17th, we are spending five weeks (online) practicing the small, sovereign acts required to secure the coop. It’s not about “killing the squirrels” or “whack-a-mole” fixes; it’s about mending the fence and reclaiming your own agency so you can actually enjoy what you’re creating.

You can find the details and join the journey here: The Return