I was not planning on updating the blog for at least a week, but I couldn't wait to share this with my loyal readers. I was "hanging out" with some fellow writers that gather from time to time, and the leader of our little group shared a writing prompt for all of us to exercise our minds and hands writing a response to. Then we shared what we wrote with the group. Many of the responses were quite good, and I may say that the group found my own contribution to be mildly amusing. I present it here with little comment or introduction, except that the suggested prompt is the title of this post, and the first sentence of what follows. Enjoy.

The pen hadn't been worth stealing. Really, just one pig would have done. Or a chicken. His mother hadn't really been too specific, she had just sent him out with instructions to "bring back dinner." She didn't seem to care how he obtained it, or what form it took. They were too poor to be very choosy in any case. But now they had an entire stye to take care of.

Jack's mother really should have learned not to send him out without detailed instructions, after that whole beanstalk episode. That could have gone seriously wrong, and only some very quick thinking and a lucky roll of the dice had averted catastrophe. It was probably going to take more than that to get him out of this one, particularly once Charlotte returned to the farm to find her entire prized swine herd missing. You just didn't mess with the Spider Queen, not if you wanted to survive, or at least avoid a sesquipedalian but impeccably spelled lecture.