Here’s a short synopsis of how an egg is made: a yolk is released from the hen’s oviduct. As it winds its way down various tubes, the yolk is surrounded by white, then membranes, then the shell and then the protective cuticle. The hen, now ready to lay, sits in her nesting box and pushes out the egg. She chuckles in a proud way, and then usually (unless she is broody) goes back outside to enjoy her day. This entire process takes about 25 hours and hens under two years old tend to do it day after day (older hens aren’t as prolific.)

If you only shop in supermarkets, you might think that all eggs are exactly the same, but those of us with chickens in our backyards know that eggs are not always perfectly uniform. As with any living process, there’s room for variation. Sometimes there’s a bit of squiggly shell, or a blotch of color. Some eggs are pointy at both ends, and some are too big to fit in an egg carton. Once in awhile, an egg will be double-yolked. I’ve found eggs without any yolks at all!

But this is the weirdest egg I’ve ever collected from a hen:

It was jumbo-sized, thin-shelled and had odd, raised bumps on the shell. Cracked open, there was a big blood spot and a white that was quite firm and opaque. When I cut that white open, there was yet another, denser white, inside of it, held together in a membrane. It looked like one egg had been formed inside another, except there was no yolk at all.

I don’t know who laid it; Lily Dog didn’t care. She said it was yummy.