Battle of the Wood of Ephraim Absalom." The two armies met in a forest of Ephraim. It was a great and terrible battle. The rebel forces were unable to maneuver because the thickness of trees, and their numbers were reduced by the underbrush of the forest. The forces of Absalom were thus routed by the royal forces of David. Absalom himself fled. As he was riding through the woods on his mule, he was caught by the long locks of his hair under the spreading branches of a large tree. Unable to free himself, he remained suspended, his mule had escaped. One of David's servants brought
Francis the Talking Mule Francis the Talking Mule Francis the Talking Mule was a mule character who became a celebrity during the 1950s as the star of seven popular Universal-International film comedies. The character originated in the 1946 novel "Francis" by former U.S. Army Captain David Stern III (1909–2003), son of newspaper publisher J. David Stern. After another studio turned down the property, Universal bought the rights for a film series, with Stern adapting his own script for the first entry, simply titled "Francis". From the "Francis" book jacket: Under the nom de plume of Peter Stirling, Stern wrote several short stories for "Esquire"