Eggs

Luis Chiappe has a hard time putting into words the enormous excitement he felt in 1997 when he played a major role in discovering a chunk of embryonic skin inside a dinosaur egg. Chiappe, the associate curator and chairman of the department of vertebrae paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, was leading a field expedition in Patagonia, Argentina, when he and his team of dinosaur sleuths became the first crew to unearth such a fossilized specimen.

This trial is for the birds. That's the reason jurors have spent a week in Los Angeles Federal Court learning about secret egg compartments, collisions with kangaroos and hidden contraband suddenly hatching and chirping in front of customs agents. Those are ingredients of a $1-million Australian cockatoo smuggling ring that authorities say Teddy Swanson helped run from her Malibu home.

A California woman was sentenced to six months in prison for smuggling 2,900 endangered sea turtle eggs into the U.S. Maria Dolores Flores, 38, bought the eggs in El Salvador in March 2000. Inspectors in Houston found them in her luggage. The protected eggs can fetch $5 each on the black market.

Legislators want to stamp out the salmonella epidemic by targeting eggs. The problem, scientists say, is that it's not a real epidemic and eggs probably aren't a culprit.

There is an even easier way to make pickled eggs than the one you described ("Getting Eggs Into a Fine Pickle," April 16). When you eat the last dill pickle from a batch, save both juice and jar. Drop in a few peeled hard-boiled eggs, and let them sit in the refrigerator for a day or so. The longer they sit, the more pickled they get. Rich Varenchik Valencia

Likening the case to a plot hatched from a Hollywood script, federal authorities are investigating how a well-preserved nest of fossilized dinosaur eggs ended up at a Los Angeles auction house. The nest, which included 22 unhatched eggs believed to be at least 65 million years old, were apparently smuggled out of China to be sold here, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

Remember when eggs were considered to be an almost perfect food? After all, they are a very inexpensive source of extremely high-quality protein and provide large quantities of vitamins B-12, E, riboflavin and folacin, plus iron and phosphorus. Then eggs got tagged with the high cholesterol label and people were afraid to eat them. For a while, the American Heart Assn. gave us permission to eat some eggs but not a lot (only one per week).

A supermarket chain sued a West German farmer for damages because the eggs from his chickens could not be painted in the traditional Easter way, a Bonn newspaper reported Saturday. The General Anzeiger said the supermarket took action after angry customers returned their newly purchased eggs saying that when they tried to paint them, the colors ran off the shells. Laboratory tests revealed that the eggs were coated with a harmless substance that resisted moisture.

A man who repeatedly stole eggs from the nests of endangered sea turtles was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison. It is believed to be the longest prison sentence imposed under the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Atty. Dexter Lehtinen said. James Bivins, 37, of West Palm Beach, pleaded guilty in June to taking 818 green and loggerhead sea turtle eggs from 17 nests on Jupiter Island Beach in August, 1988. Bivins told authorities that customers paid him up to $15 for a dozen sea turtle eggs.

Israeli researchers have transplanted frozen, then thawed ovaries into sheep and then harvested functioning eggs. Two human pregnancies have been reported after transplantation of frozen ovarian tissues but not intact ovaries. Both cases have been clouded by the possibility that the women's damaged ovarian tissue had recovered and provided the eggs for the pregnancy.