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Where We Left Off:
In our previous case file, the cat detectives and humans conducted an experiment to see which types of animals would appreciate homemade snacks.
The Great Eggscape:
We may have a serious situation on our hands. On October 25, 2023, Oliver Winchester supervised the Gnome Grove Seasonal Staff migration. I chauffeured Ollie to the grove and began collecting all the fairies, gnomes, and furniture so they can go to their winter season shift in the creepy cellar.
Emie Greenleaf, the green fairy, has sustained several injuries in battle over the years. She and some of the others are stalwart guardians of the land. Oliver gave me a strong warning about approaching her. He spotted something under the leaf she uses as an umbrella. It was something that none of us had put there.
I got close to Emie and took out my phone to make this video. Underneath her umbrella leaf was something that looked like a seashell. There was some debris from the forest floor of conifer needles, mulched leafy bits, and dirt. A spiderweb blocked it, but the web was uninhabited. I took a twig and pried the object loose. I used one of the embedded pine needles (fir or spruce, I’m not sure) as a handle and studied the strange object.
“It looks like an egg, but how would an egg get stuck there and not in a nest?” I asked Oliver. Gus was close by but he was busy looking for Pipi Lansbury, a chipmunk.
“What if it’s an insect cocoon or the type of sac that holds thousands of babies?” Ollie replied.
Eww. That made me want to drop it and vomit and then shower. Emie didn’t have any idea what this thing was either. She said her own eggs (some fairies lay eggs) are speckled and have delicate shells. She has to hide them.
I happened to have an empty prescription bottle in my adventure bag. I always try to have one in case of a situation like there where we find something too delicate to put in an evidence bag. Adventure sleuths used to use the small black plastic bottles rolls of film came in, but not many people have those anymore. The medicine bottles are good because you can see through them enough to know what’s inside if it’s going to be a temporary container.
When we got home, I uploaded the images to iNaturalist which did not any references for fairy eggs. It also kept giving only guesses for spiders because the photos I originally took still had the dirt and debris on the object. Eventually, I got around to taking some better photos for our evidence collection and uploaded those to the app. Still no results.
Could this be a cyst or a tumor? Would that kind of thing grow on a fairy’s umbrella instead of on her body? The thoughts were getting more and more disturbing. Body clones and snatchers! Mutant parasites! Aliens!
Find Voices of Reason:
I was on a video call with my meditation and yoga friends who are staunch outdoors people. They do things like go kayaking, hiking, and camping. My hikes with Gus are a few minutes. Their hikes last all day for miles and miles. They are comfortable in the wilderness to say the least.
Together we pondered whether it could be a fungi of some kind that dried out, but there was no root to the ground below. Mushrooms easily grow all over trees, but that’s an organic material. Emie’s leaf is not a real leaf. It’s probably a type of enamel-coated plaster. I showed my friends the tiny hole where I thought something may have come out and hatched. Bill had a better theory. He said it was likely something bored into it and sucked out whatever was growing inside the shell.
Case Findings:
While helping the fairies with their migration for the winter season, Oliver discovered that Emie Greenleaf had something stuck on her. We tried our best to research and compare images of the object, but nothing has matched. Not a mushroom or a cocoon. We went to outside the agency for expert help and Yogi Bill presented a great theory that the item was an eggshell or cocoon that something had bored into and consumed. It’s a place to start, but without any other hits on the images, we’re stuck with an Open case file.
Case Status: Open