Pat and the Magpie Hen

During his lunch break, Pat falls asleep on a hill above Thompson Ground, leaving his lunch box open and his keys just beside it. When he wakes up, he sees Dorothy Thompson's hens running off with his sandwiches and one with his keys. Pat follows the hen up a tree, but then the hen drops the keys and flies away. After falling out of the tree, Pat tells Mrs. Thompson about the hen and she comes to the conclusion that it must think its a magpie. Pat and Dorothy then go to get a ladder and Pat finds more than just his keys up in the tree. He also finds Mrs. Thompson's wedding ring which went missing the previous Easter and which she thought she lost down the sink. Having lost his sandwiches, Pat later has some of Mrs. Thompson's dinner. Later on when Pat carries on with the post, he tells everyone else about the magpie hen and they wonder themselves if anything they lost was taken by the bird in question. On the way home, Pat sees some real magpies and wonders if they had taught Mrs. Thompson's hens how to take shining objects like them.