Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Volga bum here. Eggs aren't a dime
Speaker 1: a dozen, but they aren't exactly in short supply either.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to imagine fighting a war over an egg, right,
Speaker 1: but this is exactly what happened in the Great fair
Speaker 1: Alons Egg War of eighteen sixty three, a time when
Speaker 1: people went to, if you'll pardon me, great eggstremes to
Speaker 1: secure eggs. They weren't fighting over ordinary chicken eggs, though.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the eggs of the common mirr, a
Speaker 1: penguin like bird that nests on rocky cliffs and spends
Speaker 1: its winters at sea. During its breeding season, which runs
Speaker 1: from May to July, the birds lay spotted, pointy eggs
Speaker 1: about twice as big as a chicken egg. The blotchy
Speaker 1: patterns make it easier for the birds to identify their
Speaker 1: eggs among the thousands that dot the rocks, while the
Speaker 1: pointed design makes it more likely that the egg will
Speaker 1: spin in a circle if it rolls out of the
Speaker 1: nest rather than falling into the sea. And it just
Speaker 1: so happens that about two hundred years ago, the common
Speaker 1: mir's favorite egg laying perch in the lower forty eight
Speaker 1: was just off the coast of San Francisco. The fair
Speaker 1: A Lons Islands are a series of small outcroppings of
Speaker 1: jagged granite upshoots about twenty seven miles or forty three
Speaker 1: kilometers from San Francisco's coastline. The birds land by the
Speaker 1: thousands on the islands, nesting, wing to wing, and dotting
Speaker 1: the landscape with egg after egg. When the California gold
Speaker 1: rush overburdened then tiny San Francisco with a largely unsupervised
Speaker 1: maleu of hungry miners and profit hungry businesses, the area's
Speaker 1: common mirrors numbered into the tens of thousands, perhaps into
Speaker 1: the millions, and their eggs were ripe for the picking.
Speaker 1: Six men decided to profit from the bird's efforts. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, they sailed to the islands and claimed ownership,
Speaker 1: complete with company shares. But it wasn't easy to gather
Speaker 1: the eggs. They had to climb steep cliffs slick with
Speaker 1: sea spray. The highest peak is Tower Hill, three hundred
Speaker 1: and forty eight foot jagged rise of marble. While being
Speaker 1: swarmed by mers and many other seabirds that call the
Speaker 1: Island's home. Still, they persevered, and the Egg Company began
Speaker 1: making a sizeable profit selling the freely collected common mur
Speaker 1: eggs to San Francisco bakers. For the articles episode is
Speaker 1: based on, the author spoke with Jerry mc chesney, manager
Speaker 1: of the Falaron National Wildlife Refuge and its Common murr program.
Speaker 1: He said come mer eggs were an incredibly abundant resource
Speaker 1: at a time when San Francisco was overwhelmed by people.
Speaker 1: Flooding in San Francisco not only lacked the infrastructure it needed,
Speaker 1: but there were no chicken farms to supply such a
Speaker 1: great need. By the early eighteen sixties, the Egg Company
Speaker 1: had some serious competition. Its hold on the islands was
Speaker 1: tentative at best. Four years earlier, US President James Buchanan
Speaker 1: solidified the federal government's own claimed the land for a lighthouse,
Speaker 1: and then, on a summer day in eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: seven armed challengers sailed towards the island. When their three
Speaker 1: boats attempted to land, the egg company four men warned
Speaker 1: them off, but the interlopers declared that they intended to
Speaker 1: land in spite of hell. What came next, the Egg
Speaker 1: company owners opened fire and When the challengers fired back,
Speaker 1: one of the egg company men was killed. The egg
Speaker 1: company men then fired on and wounded five of the
Speaker 1: men in boats, who, after twenty minutes of warfare, sailed
Speaker 1: back to home base. One of the injured men died
Speaker 1: a few days later. The post gold Rush tension, although
Speaker 1: not as dramatic, continued for years until commercial egging was
Speaker 1: banned in eighteen six after the California Academy of Scientists
Speaker 1: successfully lobbied for its end. In a late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service began managing the islands
Speaker 1: and protecting common murr breeding areas. Even so, the consequences
Speaker 1: of commercial egging were devastating to the bird population and
Speaker 1: still echoed today. There are now about three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: common murr that travel to the islands for nesting season,
Speaker 1: still fewer than it had before the Gold Rush more
Speaker 1: than a century and a half ago. Mc chesney said
Speaker 1: of the birds, it's something I never get tired of watching.
Speaker 1: The islands themselves are beautiful, rugged and other worldly, but
Speaker 1: to be out there during the peak of the breeding season,
Speaker 1: it's a spectacle to behold. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article ridiculous history and fifty years ago men killed
Speaker 1: for the eggs of these birds on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Written by Laurie L. D. Brainstuffs production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio in partnership with how Stuff Works and is
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clay. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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