Curious case of the missing eggs and the crafty crow

A kitchen mystery, a determined child, and an unlikely culprit come together in this tale by Ashrafi Antia

Rina was excited that her grandma was visiting. She planned on baking her a surprise welcome cake with her mum’s help, as old Mary, their cook, had taken the day off. It was Rina and her mum who were in for a surprise, though! Both of them had checked that they had the six eggs they needed to bake the cake in the morning. Now there were only five eggs left in the wicker basket by the window.

“That’s strange,” exclaimed Rina’s mum. “Perhaps Mary made an egg for herself before leaving, but she normally asks me before helping herself. Anyway, let’s just bake a smaller cake for now and order more eggs later, as we’re running out of time,” she said, adjusting the measurements of flour and cocoa powder accordingly.

Dadi loved the cake, and Mum and Rina were pleased as punch when she said it was the best chocolate cake she’d had in a long time. Mum questioned Mary about the missing egg the next day, but Mary swore she had not eaten it.

The following Saturday, Rina’s dad brought his gym friends home for breakfast. They all wanted omelettes. Mary popped her head out of the kitchen door, beckoning Rina’s mum. When Mum entered the kitchen, Mary sheepishly told her there weren’t enough eggs to go around. Mum was furious. “How many times have I told you to inform me if things are running out? Why do you wait till the last minute to let me know? Besides, I’m sure there were at least half a dozen eggs in the basket yesterday. How come there are only four today? Where are the eggs disappearing?” she questioned Mary angrily.

“I don’t know, Ma,” said Mary, taken aback by her accusatory tone.

Rina, who had just entered the house from the garden through the kitchen back door, overheard the conversation and immediately volunteered to run over to the neighbourhood supermarket and buy some eggs. She felt bad for Mary, whom she was rather
fond of.

At the supermarket, Rina spotted her favourite chocolate eggs. Her best friend Minal was coming over the next day. Rina decided to buy two chocolate eggs in colourful foil wrappers, one red and one blue, for Minal and herself.

When she got home, Rina left the chocolate eggs on the kitchen counter by the window, while she placed the other eggs she had bought in the egg basket. Within a few minutes, Mary whisked up delicious, fluffy omelettes, and Rina joined everyone in the dining room for breakfast.

When she returned to the kitchen a couple of hours later, her eyes fell upon her chocolate egg lying on the counter, but it was just the blue one. The red one was missing. Rina thought that perhaps it had rolled off the counter onto the floor or under the table, but she couldn’t find it. She opened the fridge to see if someone had put it there, but it wasn’t there either.

“Have you seen my chocolate egg, Mary?” she asked.

“You left it on the counter, baby. Did you forget? And I thought I was getting old,” Mary joked. “There it is, right where you left it,” she said, pointing to the egg.

“Yes, but where’s the other red one?” Rina asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mary, scratching her head.

Mum suspected that Mary was pinching the eggs and started keeping a tab on them. Sure enough, they’d find one missing every other day. Poor Mary denied taking the eggs, and Rina believed her, though Mum didn’t. Rina was determined to solve the case of the disappearing eggs and prove Mary’s innocence, as Mum was considering sacking her after all these years.

A few days later, when Rina was playing in the garden, something glinting in the sunlight caught her eye. Moving closer, she found it was a piece of the shiny red chocolate egg wrapper. This meant that whoever had taken her chocolate egg had eaten it in the garden. Her heart sank at the thought that maybe her mother was right and it could be Mary.

Suddenly, she heard some crows cawing raucously. She went to investigate why they were making a racket and was shocked to see a crow holding an egg in its beak. She could barely believe her eyes. She had never known that a crow could open its beak wide enough to hold an egg.

Placing the egg on the ground, the crow pecked at it and cracked it open. And that’s how Rina finally cracked the case of the disappearing eggs.

Hiding behind a tree to not scare the crow away, she took out her mobile phone and clicked a photo of the crow eating the egg, or else no one would have believed her. They would have said she was making up far-fetched stories to save Mary from getting sacked.

Thus, thanks to Rina, the real culprit was caught. The ingenious crow used to hop onto the windowsill and grab an egg from the basket through the window, which was kept open a crack for air. That crafty crow seemed to have cultivated a taste for eggs!

From then on, the eggs were kept in the fridge rather than by the window, and Mary stood exonerated of all blame, thanks to Rina solving the case of the mysteriously disappearing eggs.