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The Garden Party

How to clean up 165,000 smashed eggs

17 years ago

Overturned truck rigs are almost SOP around here, and often have interesting contents spilled. So eggs over the highway aren't so unusual -- but how to clean up the mess?

For an egg or two on the kitchen floor, I scoop up the splat with a plastic coffee can lid that's been trimmed to have a straight edge, salt the remaining slick and then wipe up with a damp paper towel. Obviously, that method wouldn't be workable for more than a dozen eggs...but I certainly wouldn't have thought to use kitty litter.

Here is a link that might be useful: 165000 eggs smash

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Comments (5)

mwoods
17 years ago
They have books out on ways to use duct tape and WD40 but they should also have one on kitty litter. It's great for so many things. One time I spilled a quart of varnish on the cement floor in the basement. What a mess. I got some of it with paper towels but then what? DH who was a research chemist said to just dump the kitty litter on it and leave it alone for several days. For once I listened to him and in a couple of days just swept it all up and there was barely even a stain. I can't even imagine 165,000 eggs splattered all over the highway.
andie_rathbone
17 years ago
Besides the mess, I'd think 165,000 eggs splattered all over the highway would also be extremely dangerous for the other cars on the road - sort of like hitting an oil slick.

I'm also betting that the highway department would use something like kitty litter - maybe sand? - to soak up the mess.

And, btw, kitty litter is almost as useful as duct tape in household repair jobs. Way back when, when I drove a Ford Pinto (AKA deathmobile), I always kept about 100 lbs of the stuff in the hatch to keep the back end stabilized in the winter. It was also great for throwing under the wheels in nasty weather to give them traction when I got stuck in the ice or snow.
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Josh
17 years ago
I'm just thinking of the smell of rotting eggs ...I'll bet those road crews were glad it was Feb. and not August! josh
calliope
17 years ago
Boy, can I conjure this up in my mind. At one time I had about a hundred hens, who were laying an egg a day. Believe me, it doesn't take long to get into large numbers of eggs. Thankfully fresh farm eggs sell well, but there were always those weeks when you had ten or twelve dozen you needed to do something with and those ended up as noodles. Pounds and pounds of noodles. And pounds. It seemed like 16500 at the time as I worked through the night.

This hit my heartstrings a little, because they were on their way to a hatchery. These weren't your over-easy variety of sterile unfertile supermarket eggs. They were just a few weeks and a little warmth short of this.

{{gwi:141399}}
Josh
17 years ago
What a bunch of fuzzballs. Reminds me of what seemed to be an annual 'tradition' at the small junior college I attended. Some wiseguy thought it amusing to order baby chicks and turn loose in the dorms. I thought he deserved hanging from the flagpole! Guess most were finally rounded up and given to farmers but those poor chicks probably laid odd-shaped eggs after such a trauma. josh

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