What do you get if you dd($errors);?

object(Illuminate\Support\ViewErrorBag)[127]
  protected 'bags' => 
    array (size=1)
      'default' => 
        object(Illuminate\Support\MessageBag)[129]
          protected 'messages' => 
            array (size=2)
              ...
          protected 'format' => string ':message' (length=8)

I've not used ViewErrorBag before, so I'm guessing here, but would you first need to get the default MessageBag using getBag('default') then you'd be able to call get() / first() / has()?

Cancel that, looks like the calls are proxied (__call()) to the default bag.

It seems that the keys are overwritten to numeric values somewhere.