My organic farmer neighbor (not the commercial, chemical-friendly one) is off for a week or two, so I'm minding her chickens and ducks, and harvesting the eggs. Creaking chickens, grumbling ducks. Tasty eggs.

I live in a one-road neighborhood north of my coastal town, in a compound whose landlord is locally famous for shooing strangers off the road and the little beach you can walk to from here. He is colorful for being Hungarian, going against the local political grain, having a legendary past about which any of us only know snippets and initmations, and being frankly unsentimental and money-grubbin'.

On Monday I engaged him in a squabble about my suffering electricity, and the landlord--we'll call him Holgar--said he could check on it the followng day. He just got back from Hawaii, though, sprucing up another rental property, and needed to buy bread first. And eggs. Eggs, you say? I presented him with a six-pack of duck eggs I had just collected that morning. Holgar hadn't had them before. "Are they good?" he asked. I shrugged. "Dunno. I haven't tried them yet." Holgar held up the carton, eyed it suspiciously, thanked me and left.

Tonight he calls me, asking, "So, you try your egg yet?" I had. Duck eggs, it turns out, have thicker, yet almost translucent-white shells. When they break they seem less brittle, more plastic. The yolks are gigantic, and being freshy-fresh, they are bright orange. Because I cooked them with a little onion and cotija cheese in homemade corn tortillas with sour cream, though, I couldn't tell him if the eggs themselves tasted any different than hen's eggs.
"And are you feeling okay today?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Ahh, good, then tomorrow I'll try my eggs."
I laughed; fine, I'm His Highness' taster. No poison here. The kingdom is safe!