The Eggs (Julianna)
- Julianna is back and she's got two events to tell us about:
- Event One: Champ, her dog, dies. Now that's seriously sad.
- Event Two: The eggs incident. Yep—we're going to hear her side of the tale.
- Juli starts with Event One and gives us some backstory about Champ. When she was six, her dad rescued a dog that had been abandoned and then hit by a car. Whoa—that's horrible, right? But the good news is that the Baker family adopts him. Mrs. Baker isn't thrilled about the whole thing, but she goes with it.
- Things get a little hairy when Juli's mom smells something weird around the house. Eventually she realizes it's coming from Champ. Apparently the dog has been peeing in the house, and for Mrs. B that's a big no-no, so Champ becomes an outside dog and Mrs. B dubs him the "Mystery Pisser" (6.21).
- But there is one plus side to this peeing business. Matt and Mike get a new name for their band: Mystery Pisser. You can bet Mrs. Baker isn't thrilled about that either.
- Now it's time for Juli to give us her side of the eggs story. It all started with the fifth grade science fair. Here's how Juli ends up being Queen of the Eggs:
- Step One: Juli doesn't have any ideas for a science fair project so her teacher tells her to incubate an egg. Apparently a teacher gives this idea to a student every year. Juli reluctantly gets on board.
- Step Two: Juli freaks out about having responsibility over hatching a chick. What if she accidentally kills it?
- Step Three: Mr. Baker saves the day. He raised a duck for a science fair back in the day, so he helps his daughter set up an incubator. He even helps her figure out how to candle an egg, which means using light to look inside and see how the chicks are growing.
- Step Four: Juli gets super psyched about these eggs. She documents every single thing about them, gives each egg a name, and even clucks and sings to them. Yep—she's gone full-on chicken-mom.
- Step Five: When Juli is candling an egg, she sees a heartbeat happening inside. That's actually pretty rad.
- Step Six: The chicks start to hatch on the day of the fair, so Juli takes the eggs to school. After the fair, Juli convinces her mom to let her keep the chicks and raise them.
- So now Juli is a full-time mama to chicks. Oh—and the Baker yard is a total mess and filled with mice (apparently chicks attract mice… yuck). Matt and Mike trap the mice to feed them to their snake though, so there you go.
- Eventually the chicks lay eggs, and two neighbors—Mrs. Stueby and Mrs. Helms—start buying extra eggs from Juli. She's got a regular little business going on.
- One day in sixth grade Juli realizes it would be nice to give some eggs to Mrs. Loski, since she's been a pretty kind neighbor to her family. Plus delivering eggs to Mrs. L means getting to see Bryce more often. Bonus.
- So for two years Juli brings Bryce eggs and things are going on pretty dandily.
- Then Juli has a rough few weeks.
- First the sycamore tree gets cut down, and then Champ dies. Juli is upset about it for awhile and doesn't tend to her hens and their eggs.
- After a little while, Juli gets back to egg-tending. She takes a carton over to Bryce, but just after catches him throwing the eggs out. When she asks why, he explains that they're worried about salmonella because her house is a dump. Sadly Juli realizes that Bryce is right about her family's yard.
- After Juli tells Bryce that she could've given her eggs to Mrs. Stueby or Mrs. Helms, she cries and goes home. Her feelings are seriously hurt.