Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Hens Ate Deadly Dynamite


1910

Owner Won't Go Near Them, Afraid of Their Eggs

Winsted, Connecticut — A man who has a small farm a few miles from this town does not dare to trample on a small portion of it, and is afraid to eat his own hens' eggs. Heavy fowls he had been fattening for Thanksgiving are immune from death for the present, so far as his killing them is concerned.

Dynamite is the cause of his trouble. He opened two one-pound sticks of the explosive, into which a little frost had found its way, and after breaking the cylinders into pieces spread them on a flat stone in the sun to dry. He meant to use the dynamite in a lot he is clearing.

When he went to get the explosive after he had drilled holes in a big boulder, he saw a flock of his hens scratching in the dynamite, and eating it as they would eat small gravel. That's why the farmer does not dare to eat his own hens' eggs, for he fears particles of dynamite may lurk in the shells.

"Who knows where that dynamite they ate is now?" he said, sadly. "Suppose it's got into the shells? Think I'd run the risk of cracking one of those egg-shells? Yet how are you going to eat eggs without breaking the shells?"

And that's the story in an egg shell. The puzzled farmer cannot tell by the looks of his hens which ate the dynamite, therefore he doesn't dare eat any of them at Thanksgiving. As for swinging heavily on their heads with an axe he shudders at the thought.


Not Responsible

Nurse — What's that dirty mark on your leg, Master Frank?
Frank — Harold kicked me.
Nurse — Well, go at once and wash it off.
Frank — Why? It wasn't me that did it! — Punch.

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