Got Eggs?

    Seeing the beautiful collection of eggs stretched out across the Sikora’s kitchen table is mesmerizing. The contrasting colors gleam under the sunlit kitchen- each of them with a story, memory, or purpose in the collection. Brandi’s collection began in 2007 after her mother gave her three granite eggs in a wire chicken as a gift to decorate her first house with. When inquiring about their purpose,  her mother remarked “that they were originally used to encourage hens to lay as well as lessen the snake population. Apparently,  if a snake swallowed one of the stone eggs, it would either die or not be able to get out of the hen house and therefore the farmer could kill it easier.” Since then, Brandi has cultivated quite a collection- “ I started seeing them everywhere I went; antique stores, flea markets, tourist shops, etc. Once I got a good collection of them together, I started being a little more picky about which ones I bought.” As she continued collecting,  Brandi discovered it to be a great way to have souvenirs from all the places her and her husband have lived and visited, being a military family. “I found a hand-carved quartz egg in Chinatown.

    San Francisco,  Ocean Jasper from Cannery Row in Monterey, California, fossils shaped into eggs from the Petrified Forest, and so on.” Many of the eggs in Brandi’s collection are semi-precious stones such as Malachite, Amethyst, Obsidian, Tigers Eye, Labradorite, Fluorite and Quartz.  “A few eggs I sought out online to bring my collection closer to completion and these include Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan, Septarian Dragonstone from Madagascar, and one of my favorites, Iron Pyrite (fools gold)-  I guess I wanted the golden egg that the goose laid!”  When asked if she planned on collecting more, she said “I don’t think my collection will ever be complete. I’m already planning on finding some eggs on our trip to Hawaii this month! Who doesn’t love a good egg hunt?”, she laughed.