Off With Her Head

One day, Henry VIII was happy as could be. He was king of all he surveyed. Then Anne Boleyn arrived and things began to unravel. She was different right from the start. Then it got even more weird. One day Henry VIII woke up and found Anne had changed completely and was challenging his throne. Dressing like a male, pretending to be what she was not. Henry was quite upset, after all, he ruled the roost! A fowl plot indeed.

A transsexual hen is causing a palace revolution in Sweden.

"Henry VIII is bloody angry. The other hens are mostly just surprised but they seem to increasingly accept him or her," the owner of the henhouse, Christel Hammar-Malmgren, told the online edition of regional daily Blekinge Laens Tidning Friday.

Hammar-Malmgren woke up one morning in July to the sound of two roosters crowing, instead of just one. To her surprise, she discovered that one of the black hens, Anne Boleyn — all of the hens are named after Henry VIII's wives — had undergone a transformation.

"She had lost most of her hen feathers and had begun growing a comb and tail," she said.

The transsexual hen joined the henhouse last year and was different from the start. She was uninterested in the usual hen chores and laid bad eggs, Hammar-Malmgren said.

She insisted however that despite the change, and unlike the hen's namesake, there were no plans to end Anne Boleyn's days prematurely.

Despite the owner's protests, we expect to hear news soon that Henry has taken classic Henry VIII action.