Jack
Jack knew his mother was wrong. And now she had to agree. After climbing up the beanstalk three times and returning with the sack of gold, the goose that laid the golden eggs, and the singing harp, there was no doubt that the seeds had been magical. But now the beanstalk had been cut down. Jack was not satisfied with having no beanstalk to climb, especially now that the giant was taken care of. But let us remember, this was a beanstalk; and what grows on beanstalks? Beans. It took a while to find them all but he managed to find a large number of beans. Within each bean were a number of seeds. So carefully Jack managed to excise the bean seeds from the beans and set them out to dry.
Problem number one, beans that are set out to dry create much food for the visiting birds. Jack had not anticipated that. By the time he realized what was happening. He was left with only one bean. Which he took inside to fully dry out before planting.
Problem number two, magic beans are magic after all, regardless of whether they are dry or not, and when ingested by said birds they tend to have an effect.
Problem number three, though the beans did have magical properties, all beans are not the same, even though they come from the same plant.
When Jack cleared a spot and planted his bean, nothing happened right away. Of course, he had to wait overnight. When he woke up and looked out of the window, he had planned on seeing a giant beanstalk. Much to his surprise, instead of a beanstalk, what he found was a cow, a giant cow. Talk about a reversal of fortunes.
Next came the dead birds. It would appear that magic seeds are not a good diet staple for birds. Each one of them had died, leaving behind a string of bird carcasses that were taking root in the ground around the big cow. You know the old joke about the boy who bought some birdseed at the store so that he could plant them and grow birds. Well, sad to say, it’s not a joke, as out of each bird’s remains grew a baby bird chick. Each bird chick seemed to need some nourishment, as they were growing pretty fast. Would you believe that this big cow did not give milk, but instead from the enormous amount of grains it happened to find (also due to some scattered beans that Jack had not found) it managed to provide sustenance for all of the birds.
The birds, once fed and grown up, which took about 30 minutes, all flew away. Rumor had it that they found companionship with some traveling old man. It’s believed that that man was the original man that traded Jack his magical beanstalk beans.
The cow having supplied all its food for the birds, sadly died.
And that should be the end of the story. But Jack was an entrepreneur. He ended up using the cowhide to start up a business selling magic belts. Granted they weren’t magic, but with Jack’s reputation as a Giant Killer, who would disagree with him. That is until the Feds got wind of his scam. But that’s another story.
