It was another glorious day on the ranch. He awoke and went through his morning routine then as he tried to emerge from the house there was..well, there was a basket behind the door. And in the basket was a large egg..and bread and sweets...were they supposed to eat the egg? It looked like a snaptrotter egg..was he supposed to hatch it? How odd. He would blame his brother but well Ushiwa didn't bake. He left that to Sae.

"Well, it might as well go in the incubation room while I figure out this mystery." He pondered every family member but well he came up with nothing. Terr was the smart one maybe he would ask her about it later. For now though, he stuffed one of the sweet sticky buns in his mouth and carried the snaptrotter egg to their incubation room. Sometimes they couldn't convince mamas to incubate their eggs or they were given clutches after something happened to the parents. Happily for the gift egg they were well equipped to take care of it.

He settled the egg in the room with a label so he would know which one it was. and then he went about his daily chores. Always his first stop after breakfast himself was to check and feed on Myr who was his closest bonded snaptrotter. He was cozied up in his stall, tail contentedly swishing back and forth until he heard Thallassa then with a twinkle in his eye he yowled and begged for his breakfast as he always did. Being a snapptrotter was hungry work. He would eat meat sure, but he preferred fish.

Thall dumped a bunch of pollack into his feeding bowl. "Courtesy of Kellye today boy, fresh from the ship." They had it delivered before dawn so that the critters had the best and freshest. When Kellye was unavailable or otherwise engaged they bought fish from Theriar's fishing vessel with the same deal, point was they had sources and it showed in the health and quality of their animals. He cleaned the stall with a few tail flicks for his trouble. Myr as ever was spirited.

"And how is your misus doing? Had her clutch didn't she?" Myr was one of their premier breeding bulls and he was a very good dad and a good babysitter for his own kids, though his triplets were getting a bit old for babysitting. Myr rumbled an answer to his question and Thall chuckled. "That a boy. I'm sure we will have two more dames lined up for you soon enough, it is the season after all. Eventually he would have to find another bull for the program. He had started looking at ads in the local paper but he thought he might just tame a wild one, it had worked so well with Myr after all and his genetics were more than robust, crafted by survival not the medling of potentially an inferior breeder.

He checked on the female and sure enough she had had her clutch. This brightened his mood.

Things progressed day after day. It turned out that it was his niece that had made the basket but she admited it was definitely not her that laid the snapper egg. He was amused at how she worded it.

The answer was finally revealed about 30 days leter when the egg hatched looking like a carbon copy of his Dad. "Well this explains much." Myr must have snuck out. He was deft at unlocking the stall doors and stayed inside because he chose to. He had obviously taken an egg from the females clutch and made a very sweet offering to Thal.

"Of course I will keep you little one, what a most precious gift," The little snaptrotter did exactly what his Dad did when teasing him and spread his little maw wide open and thrashed his tail. "I take it you are quite happy too then!"

"I will call you Zyr." The hatchling seemed to really like his new name. Thall was highly amused at the sense of humor of the natural world, he knew there was no way that Myr could know that Zyr would hatch as a carbon copy..except for the eyes that came from his dam, a bright icy blue as opposed to Myr's bright lime green eyes. "What a beautiful scale baby you are. I'm sure Terr will be delighted too."

The rest of the clutch looked more like the Mom which he found fascinating. He eyed Myr wonding if the beast someway somehow had xray vision but he knew it couldn't be so. Fate was just funny like that. Needless to say he was highly amused when writing out his training notes and filling out the clutch records. He was decent with his paperwork to Vilre's endless gratitude.
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