Good evening, children. It's Granny Maduff, ready with a story. So make yourselves comfy, and I'll begin.

Once upon a time.

It is an absolutely dreadful story, said the little hen.

She was perched next to her friends, three other hens and a rooster.

I am glad I'm not by myself, for I don't think I could sleep.

She was telling it on the other side of town from where it had all happened, so her friends knew nothing about it.

A truly terrible thing to happen in a henhouse.

Tell us, her friends demanded. So she did.

The little hen told them a story that made the feathers on their back stand straight up.

The rooster included.

But let's start at the beginning before the truly terrible, absolutely dreadful event took place inside the henhouse on the other side of town.

The sun had set and night had fallen.

The hens in the henhouse flew up to their perches to settle in for the evening.

One of them was a white-feathered hen who was quite respectable.

She did everything according to the rules and laid some of the best eggs there were.

Once she was comfortable, she plucked herself with her beak, and a little tiny white feather

came out from under the others.

It was a lovely, fluffy little thing.

Oh, there it flies, said the hen, as the feather danced through the air towards the ground.

I do suppose the more I pluck, the better I as the feather dance through the air towards the ground.

I do suppose the more I pluck, the better I will look, stronger and prettier, most certainly, she said.

But the white-feathered hen was quite the jokester, and she only set it in good fun, not actually meaning it.

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