Whose nose?

The village matchmaker was a renowned yenta, a busybody, as any good matchmaker should be, and was continuously poking her nose in places it didn’t belong. And, she really had the equipment for it. Her proboscis would have rivaled Cyrano’s in length and Poirot’s for inquisitiveness

One day while at the town’s open bazaar, she was shopping for a new laying hen. Her own had been the recent victim of a wandering alley cat, and she was hungering for the taste of fresh eggs. One hen in particular caught her fancy. It was large, plump and was already sitting on a clutch of eggs.

The farmer, sensing a sale, was loudly extolling the virtues of the bird as the shadkhan leaned forward to get a closer look.

Unfortunately, the hen was somewhat nearsighted and seeing the shadhkan’s nose approaching her, mistook it for a worm and pecked it with the sort of vigor one would expect from a large healthy bird.

The vituperation that ensued was loud, raucous and unprofitable to both sides. Needless to say, there was no sale, the farmer’s sons died bachelors and his daughters spinsters, and oh yes, to this day, they still tell the tale.

For whose nose was evilly irked in the marts of hen? The shadkhan’s nose.