Post 20 The angry snake and the wandering hen

Snake 

One Sunday afternoon Jim was walking past our woodpile and almost trod on a deadly type of snake.  It slipped down a hole in the ground nearby, but he dug it out with a mattock, though in doing so he managed to cut the snake in half.  

The living half, with the head, raised itself up from the ground and struck at the mattock head three times, so he divided that piece into three. 

Even then, the part with the head started to move away, and Jim had to chase after it with a stone, and crushed it.  He decided that it was not a good idea to chop snakes up, although in this case there had been no alternative.

Wandering Hen

To expect the unexpected was the order of the day, or night!  From our small number of hens, one had disappeared quite suddenly, and we assumed that it must have been stolen. 

The following Sunday night our evening meeting was in progress when, following the shaft of light from the footpath, quietly and resolutely into the meeting-room walked our hen with a long piece of string attached to its leg. 

No one seemed to take any notice of it except Jim and myself. We found it hard to keep straight faces as the hen walked through and disappeared into the darkness of the backyard.  No doubt it had come out from the doorway of the room next to ours, because hens did not usually wander about in the blackness of the night.