There was once a poor long suffering wife who had a lazy husband. Every morning she had to heave him out of bed and drag him down the stairs to his breakfast. He was always complaining about being tired because he worked so hard all-the-day-long.
After she’d run a garden rake through his ragged hair, she’d give him a pasty and a shove out of the door sending him hurtling down the garden path.
When he’d picked himself up, he would lie right down again and fall asleep.
The cows were never milked, the eggs weren’t ever collected, the turnips never
sown nor harvested, unless it was by the poor old wife. The husband only lifted a finger to pick his nose, or to scratch his backside.

One afternoon, when he’d woken up and gobbled his pasty, he looked up and saw a buzzard circling above.
The husband called up “ Lucky you, flying in the sky, taking it easy up there. You don’t know what it’s like down here, with a scold for a wife and so much work to do.
It’s easy being a bird. All you do is flap your wings about and glide around in the air.
You should come down here and try being a man who works hard all day, and then you’d know what aching arms feel like.”
Well with that, the bird flew down and perched on the fence post next to him and said,
“Alright, let’s swap around.”
“How are we going to do that?” asked the man.
“Easy,” said the buzzard, “ give me your clothes and you can have my feathers.”
So the two swapped around. The man became a buzzard and the buzzard became a
man.
“How do I find my food?” asked the The Buzzard Who Had Been A Man.
“Oh, it’s easy,” said The Man Who Had Been A Buzzard, “ when you’re up in the sky looking down from on high, you’ll be able to see the smell of dead creatures. The smell rises like smoke.
If it’s a dead mouse, the smoke seems pink and wispy.”
“I don’t like mice,” said The Buzzard Who Had Been A Man.
“ If it’s a dead rabbit, the smoke is grey & light.”
“ I don’t mind rabbit,” he replied.
“ If it’s a dead deer, the smoke is black & strong.”
“ I do like deer,” the other affirmed.

The Buzzard Who Had Been A Man hopped and flew up into the sky and The Man Who Had Been A Buzzard walked home to the wife.
When he got to the house he told the wife to sit down while he made them supper.
In the morning he brought her breakfast in bed.
Later that day he tidied up the yard and the garden and put all the brambles & rubbish into a big pile. Then he called to the wife to show all the work he’d done. She watched as he struck a match and set fire to the pile.
As the bonfire burned a great spiral of black smoke rose up.

Suddenly, a buzzard swooped down into the smoke and landing right in the middle of the fire, was burnt to a cinder.
The wife gasped, “Did you see that bird drop into the bonfire. What was it thinking of?”

“What a birdbrain,” said The Man Who Had Been A Buzzard. “ Let’s go indoors and you can put your feet up while I make us a nice cup of tea.”

A few weeks later, when the wife went to the market, a neighbour came up to her and said. “What’s got into your husband? Everybody’s talking about him. He’s changed.”
“What do you mean?” enquired the wife.
“Well, he’s become hard working and very polite to everyone nowadays it’s true,
but…” “But what?”, said the wife.
“Haven’t you noticed?” said her neighbour, “when he thinks no-one’s watching he starts rubbing his shoulders with his nose as if he’s preening himself and then he flaps his arms about like wings. The other morning I caught him trying to stand on a fence post. And haven’t you noticed that there are always little bits of feathers stuck to his clothes? People are talking. They say he’s not the man he was. He’s acting like a bird. He’s not a proper human. They say your husband is a buzzard in disguise.”

“You hold your tongue,” retorted the wife. “ I’d rather have a husband who works hard and cares for me than live with that lazy-good-for-nothing I had before.”

And with that, she bought two dead rabbits from the butcher’s stall, put them in her basket and made her way back home to cook their supper.