The Bewitched Hen of Roney's Point

 

A Leghorn hen like this one laid a really weird egg
in West Virginia! 

It's Weird Wednesday! It's also Witchy Wednesday! Today's blog is a 2 for 1 in witchy weirdness, with the tale of a Leghorn hen that laid a rather interesting egg, near Roney's Point, West Virginia in 1886! The following story can be found on page 4 in the Daily Register, a newspaper from Wheeling, West Virginia, in the March 31, 1886 edition. 

MYSTERIOUS WORK OF A HEN

She Lays An Egg That Contains Cabalistic Inscriptions

Col. Jacob Nunge has a very peculiar Hen's egg on exhibition at his place in upper Market Square. This piece of hen fruit is about an inch and three quarters in diameter one way, and a fraction over that the other, it being almost perfectly round. On the outer edge of the shell the surface is corrugated all the way around, while inside of this is another circle in which the letters T A M N I O I U in Roman letters are plainly visible. At one of the ends of the egg a figure "6" is also to be seen.

A white Leghorn, owned by Jacob Fisher, of Roney's Point, gave up this mystery on the 25th inst, but whether the hen was bewitched or whether she performed this little feat just to have some fun, cannot be told. Nevertheless the curiosity is there and anyone can go and see it. 

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this strange incident, but I can't help to think that this is the sort of thing that the famed Charles Fort, collector of bizarre and unexplained occurrences in the natural world, would have been proud to have in his collection. And, it happened right here in wild and weird (and of course, wonderful) West Virginia!

Want MORE weird animal stories? Check out my blog post, Weird Wednesday: Weird Animals Around Charleston!