Easter’s come early at Aesop’s Tables in Peterborough, where the small bookstore cafe has been the victim of a series of unusual occurrences.
Over the past few weeks, Aesop’s staff have found hard-boiled eggs secreted away in their bathroom on multiple occasions.
“It’s the second case where somebody stuck a hard-boiled egg in our bathroom under the paper towels,” said co-owner Mary Jo Allen of Peterborough Tuesday, gesturing to a sign on the bathroom door asking whoever’s responsible to stop the practice. “I think it’s a prank. I don’t know why somebody would do that.”
If it’s a prank, it’s an extremely specific one.
“I’ve never heard of kids my age sneaking eggs into places,” said teenage Aesop’s employee Nicole Bogdzewic. “That’s not a thing we do.”
The eggs are either duck or goose eggs, Allen said, a little harder to come by than standard chicken eggs. Peterborough Police Chief Scott Guinard said he is not aware of any similar reports made to his department.
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” Guinard said.
While these surreptitious egg drops sound like the work of a hard-boiled criminal, Guinard said that there might not be anything technically illegal about it.
“Given what you’ve described, at least at this point, no, it doesn’t sound like a crime,” Guinard said. “I have a business, people come and go and use my restroom. If somebody is leaving hard-boiled eggs, that’s not a crime.”
Whether or not the prankster is on the sunny side of the law, the cafe’s staff is on the lookout. As of Tuesday morning, a “wanted” poster for “reckless abandonment of goose eggs” was up on the wall.
Allen said she hopes the signs will be the end of the great egg capers, and that they might make a specialty dish in honor of the saga.
“Maybe an egg drop soup,” she said.