One
day a young chicken hawk (also called a kite) was sick, and a man came to the
mother chicken hawk and said to her, “I know one man who can cure your child. 
If you give me fifty thousand shillings, I will go and get him for you.”  The
mother chicken hawk gave him the money, and the man went to get the
medicine-man.  Now, the medicine-man was the spider. The man went to him and
said, “The chicken hawk has a very sick baby, and she has sent me to get you so
that you can go to treat the baby.  Will you go now?”  The spider replied, “Your
hen saw me yesterday and threatened to eat me, if she sees me again.  I am a
tiny little thing, and if I go alone I might be eaten.”  But the man insisted
that the spider should go alone, without him.

    So the spider picked
up his medicine bottles, and carried them in a bag over his shoulders.  But as
the spider went along, he was not very happy.  He was afraid of being eaten
before he reached the home of the chicken hawk. Very soon he saw the mother hen,
and he hid himself by the path. The hen saw the spider. She picked him up with
her beak, and gave him to her chicks to eat. The spider left a letter and his
medicine bottles there, before he died.

    Now, the chicken hawk waited and waited
for the medicine-man to arrive but he failed to turn up.  So she went out to
look for him, and on her way she saw broken medicine bottles, and a letter
addressed to her.  She picked it up, opened it, and read:

    “To
the chicken hawk,

    I was
on my way to your home to treat your baby, but I met mother hen who took me and
gave me to her chicks to eat.”

   
Then the chicken
hawk flew back to her nest, after she had read that letter.  A few days later
her baby died, and she was greatly grieved.  She decided to take revenge; and
from that day on, she began to eat chickens.  That is why you see the chicken
hawk catching chicks and flying away with them, to eat them.  She passed a law
for the rest of the birds and human beings that they should eat the hen’s
chicks, as well as grown-up chickens.  To this day, if you seize a hen, she will
say, “It is not I!  It is not I!”  She means, by saying that, that she was not
the one who killed the spider when he was on his way to cure the baby of the
chicken hawk.