'Stopped at Nine'

My grandpa was the only one home. The rest of my family was waiting for me at the field to watch my championship soccer match.

"Freddy, what's gotten into you?" Grandpa asked.

I held my stomach and glanced over at the empty plate.

"No." Grandpa shook his head. "You ate all Grandma's cookies?"

I moaned.

Grandpa looked at his watch. "Time's tickin' away till your game."

"I don't think I can make it."

"You remind me of an old snake I knew." He sat down next to me.

"A snake?" Grandpa had a story for everything.

"Back when I was a boy, there were problems in the chicken coop one summer," he said. "The eggs were turning up missing."

My stomach churned, but I listened on.

"So every day I sat quietly in the woods, watching," Grandpa said. "But I never saw anything or anybody."

I wondered what this had to do with cookies.

"Until one day, I heard those chickens squawkin' and fussin'," Grandpa said. "I crept real close. Stuck my head up to the henhouse."

"Was it a snake?"

"It was a snake all right," he said.

"What kind?"

"A chicken snake." Grandpa laughed.