I spy with my little eye…something chocolate! Can you see the foil-wrapped Easter candy tucked in the corner of the road sign? I spotted this little treasure while we were wandering around Delft in the Netherlands on Sunday morning. Made me wonder if the town had had an Easter egg hunt and this one got overlooked (it was more than six feet off the ground, so if it was a hunt geared towards young ‘uns, no wonder they missed it!), or if someone had just randomly stuffed a chocolate egg in the sign (maybe they stashed eggs all over town, like a squirrel hides acorns). I’m not normally one to pass by a piece of chocolate, but not knowing the provenance of the egg made me uneasy about testing its edibility, so I reluctantly walked away.

Seeing this forgotten egg reminded me of a family Easter many years ago. I must have been about eight, and my brother six, and we had dyed and decorated a dozen hard-boiled eggs with Mom’s help. On Easter Sunday, Dad took the eggs out and hid them all around the back yard, concealing them well in the shrubs, trees, and patio furniture. When he had finished, my brother and I were turned loose to hunt high and low, each wanting to best the other by finding the most eggs. I don’t remember now whose basket held more when we finally gave up the hunt, but I know for sure it wasn’t a tie. The twelfth egg remained hidden, despite hours of searching. We sent Dad back out to retrace his steps and find the rogue egg, but he, too, came up empty-handed. We would have accused Dad of eating it instead of hiding it, but he didn’t particularly care for hard-boiled eggs so we were pretty sure he was innocent. For days afterward, my brother and I went back out into the yard, poking in bushes, digging in mulch, climbing up trees, and turning over rocks, but each time returned to the house eggless. We thought for sure the sulfur smell of rotten egg would eventually lead us to the pastel-colored fugitive, but weeks passed without a malodorous whiff. Dad finally concluded that soon after the hunt a raccoon must have come through the yard and had it for a snack.

Wonder what kind of critter might tote off the chocolate egg hidden in the street sign?