For dinner last Wednesday we had eggs.

The first course was a soft-boiled hummingbird’s egg, with needle-sliver soldiers of buttered toast.

The second course was the egg of a blue tit, gently scrambled and topped with spinach.

The third course — still far from the main —was the egg of a quail, fried and sesasoned with cracked black peppercorn.

The eighteenth course, again bigger than the seventeenth and all eggs before it, was an Ostrich eggs benedict. It was delicious.

For dessert, we had the egg of a chocolate moa. Chocolate moas, an extant species unlike their poor dead cousins, the normal moas, get pretty angry when you steal their eggs. As I took a cautious bite, I heard a scream and a squawk from the kitchen. The chocolate moa had traced back its own ovum to our little party, and come for vengeance. It killed each and every person at the dinner. They couldn’t run away because they had eaten too many eggs. I just said “I’m so sorry moa.” And the moa, of course, forgave me.