So much for instinct - eggs all over the coop and pen

I got nine eggs today, and six of them were where they were supposed to be. The other three were everywhere but.

The first two, I discovered amidst the poop on the poop boards down on the floor of the coop when I went out to clean and to let the girls out. They weren't broken, so they had to have been laid there on purpose.

I was in the pen later in the afternoon, and I noticed my EE Francie was just sitting beside the water fount with her eyes closed. I looked away for a minute and when I looked back where she had been sitting, there was her green egg lying in the sand.

I've found eggs smashed on the poop boards before that probably slipped out during the night, but I can't recall ever seeing this kind of pre-meditated slackery, except once when a pullet laid her first egg under the coop. Why on earth would three hens decide that, "heck, the ground is as good a place as any to lay my egg - why go to the bother of finding a nest?"