Speaking of hoe handles...
When I was a boy there were lots of rattlers. One night there was a commotion out at the hen house. Daddy thought it was a fox, but it was a rattler. When he went to kill it with a hoe, the snake struck the handle. Daddy killed the snake and went back to bed.
When we awoke the next morning we found the hoe handle had swelled into a huge log! Being frugal, my dad took it to town and had it sawn into lumber. Then he built a new hen housewith that.
A couple of nights later, another commotion outside. Again, he investigated. Seems there had been a shower earlier and the rain washed all the poison out of the wood which shrank back to its original size and squeezed every hen to death. Lots of squawking, I'll tell you.
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