Friend Ranch 'Stormcloud' Thunderegg

From the Friend Ranch in eastern Oregon, northeast of the city of Madras.

Aaaah - this thunderegg . . .

I was researching my novel GROM when I happened to come across this weird thing called a thunderegg. I had never heard the term before but since GROM is about thunderstorms, and since a thunderegg appeared to be a kind of Geode (something I had always collected in a small way), I casually entered the word in eBay. The first thing I saw dropped my jaw. It wasn't a geode as such. Instead I saw something that looked like a cloud - imprisoned and frozen - in what had to be stone. I saw - well - I saw a thunderegg! It really was. It was an embryonic stormcloud. How else could it be described? I bid, still feeling slightly shaken and trembly, both at the sight of the thing and at having something like this drop into my lap as a small element for my book. It arrived across the atlantic - and in the flesh it was only more, not less incredible. This is it. The first thunderegg I ever owned. Is it even possible to get a better introduction to the thundereggs than this embryonic stormcloud? It is easy to imagine this thing hatching with a bang and a small black flash shooting skywards . . .

GROM remains in progress.