Lightning Flash Picks Setting Hen's Bones

1921

Winchester, Va.—A marvelous freak of lightning was reported by Mrs. Coleman Lyne of Jefferson county, West Virginia, who declared that after lightning had struck a small pear tree near her chicken yard she went out to look after a hen whose eggs were soon to hatch. She found the lightning had run down the fence a short distance to the nest, and there was the skeleton of the hen in the exact position in which she had set upon the nest.

The bones were as clean as if they had been scraped, and the meat and feathers lay nearby not even scorched. None of the eggs had been cracked, but on close inspection a small hole was found in the end of each, and the inside of the shell burned out as clean as a new pin.

—Mountain Democrat, Placerville, California, October 29, 1921, page 7.