There's a chronic problem with telling a great story. At some point, somebody will say, "Aw, I don't believe that" -- which is your cue to either prove its truth or admit that you made it up.

Raleigh resident Richard Badham has had this tall-tale problem for years. He's been telling a great story, but it's one that brings immediate expressions of disbelief from almost all listeners. Last week, he finally got the chance to quiet the doubters.

Badham really did find a golf ball in a goose egg. Now he can prove it.

Badham, a retired business executive, lives near the Carolina Country Club's 11th hole. Seven years ago, a pair of Canada geese made a nest at the edge of his yard and deposited a clutch of eggs. Badham, fascinated by this cycle of life unfolding before him, began monitoring the eggs' progress. (Considering how most golfers feel about Canada geese, which have become a plague on North Carolina courses, he is to be commended for not practicing his chip shot with the eggs.)

Eventually, all but one of them hatched. After a while, Badham -- with a research scientist's instinct stirring in him -- wondered about the remaining egg, so he opened a hole in it. He saw a golf ball inside.

You probably think you can explain this, but you'd be wrong. The mama goose didn't somehow swallow a golf ball and subsequently lay it as an egg. It doesn't work like that. Anything a goose swallows goes through its digestive tract. An egg goes through its reproductive tract. Those are separate piping systems.

So how did it happen? I'll get to that in a moment.

Badham took the egg to the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, where it was examined by staff members. They could see immediately that it wasn't a hoax, simply because the egg was mostly intact and the hole Badham had made was much smaller than the golf ball. After much chin-stroking and head-wagging, museum staffers settled on a plausible explanation for this happenstance -- and then parked the egg in the museum's research room, out of sight of the public.

Suddenly, Badham's tale-telling became problematic. When he shared the story with people around the clubhouse, Badham recalls, "they said, 'You're a liar.' " He could offer no ready defense. His proof -- the egg itself -- was gone from his custody.

Badham was caught in this no man's land of storytelling for years. Finally, a few months ago, he called museum director Betsy Bennett with a plaintive request: Could he come see the egg?

Bennett not only said OK, she also arranged for the egg to be put on permanent public display in the museum's Naturalist Center. Alongside it is a copy of an article published in a scientific journal explaining how the golf ball came to be inside the egg. (The short-and-sweet version: After the ball somehow ended up in the nest, the goose sat on it, which caused the ball to work its way up into the shell-making machinery. It turns out that other items -- metal pins, pebbles, coffee beans, etc. -- have similarly been found in goose eggs over the years.)

Last week, Badham and a dozen of his disbelieving friends gathered at the museum to view the egg. By the end of the visit, Badham's credibility had thus been re-established.

But if he starts telling about a talking goose, he's on his own. The museum can't help him with that one.

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