Eggs keep me alive, more or less.

It is not just the eating of them, although I do down two scrambled eggs, dolloped with mayonnaise, almost every morning.

It is the getting of those eggs that fulfills my doctors’ instructions to get a half-hour of vigorous exercise nearly every day.

That begins with a walk toward the barn, located about 100 yards from our farmhouse. Out where we live, one does not simply walk out the back door and stroll into the barn. Chores pop up all along the way.

Left to themselves, our four or five cats would be barn cats. My wife decided to entice them to loll around the house to munch on mice, moles and other house-invading small critters. So we supply a bit of food near the house. Our always-hungry dogs pirate the cat food if they can reach it, so I cobbled a chest-high platform from scrap wood, then screwed a metal food dish atop it. I drilled drain holes into the metal dish for good measure.

So the first order of business on my egg-fetching routine is to fill that dish with a small scoop of cat food. I alert the cats to emerge from their snoozing places in my wife’s improvised cat houses (pun intended) made from plastic storage boxes, old blankets, etc.

I do this by blowing on a child’s imitation duck call. If it will call ducks, it can call cats. My regular whistles call the dogs. They get biscuits to tide them over until we reach the barn.

I then saunter to the front of the house to fill the two bird feeders.

Happily, bear visits occur only once or twice a year, so the jays, starlings, orioles, cardinals, etc. usually get to eat their food without interference, except, perhaps, from cats trying to jump the six-foot distance to the bird feeders.

Returning the empty scoops and filling the watering pan near the house, I have walked for perhaps five minutes of that prescribed half-hour. Because the dogs are prancing around anticipating getting their own feed inside the barn, I walk briskly to avoid being “dog-loved” with nudges, licks and jump-ups.

The dogs and cats have free access to an entire half-acre pond, but the watering dish near the house also encourages the felines and canines to stay close.

Then we go down to the barn. Since we want the cats to do their mouse-nabbing routines inside the barn as well as around the house, I feed them inside the barn as well, using small portions to supplement what they get by hunting.

Every so often, I say bad words. One or another of you folks is responsible. Do NOT drop off cats! Our cats are territorial. Dropped-off cats get chewed, ripped, wounded, torn apart. I have to bury them, or shoot the badly mauled cripples. I hate that. I also hate the unfeeling idiots who throw away cats like discarded bottles.

The dogs chomp their food, in two separate dishes. Originally, the separate dishes were designed to minimize fighting over food. Now, they help whenever one or the other needs medication or a smaller ration to trim away some body fat.

The chickens await, clucking and purring as chickens do. Some people feed chickens once a day. We get the most eggs from our eight layers by keeping food available 24/7, and using an electric timer to ensure 14 hours of continuous light.

Feeding them, collecting four or five eggs and occasionally hefting 50-pound feedbags adds another 10 minutes or so to that daily half-hour walk goal.

Then comes a Pied Piper stroll around the perimeter of our yard and close-to-home field, about six acres. The perambulation covers about a mile. Already fed, the dogs and cats have no real incentive to tag along, but they do. I entice the dogs with biscuits. With cats, there is no enticing. Like Yoda of “Star Wars,” cats either “do or not do.” Usually, two or three walk more or less with me, though not coming as close as the dogs. My wife usually takes her own walk in town with female friends, but if that does not occur, she also comes along.

So there I am, carrying a wire basket holding four or five eggs, swishing through the grass like Little Bonnie Foo-Foo. I usually do not actually skip, unless I feel especially silly. Hey, at 77, I am almost grown up.

When I re-enter the house to store the eggs, I usually will have been outside and moving for that prescribed half-hour, rain or shine, winter or summer.

So in their own way, eggs do keep me alive, and (I told you I was not quite grown up so you know this next phrase is coming…) that’s no yolk.

¯¯¯

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.