The Stork and the Fox (a perspective)
I am sure all of us have heard and read the story of the Fox and the Stork …
Actually everyone throughout kept giving the example of the Fox saying, ‘Do not play tricks on your neighbors unless you can stand the same treatment yourself.
So let me tell you the story from a different point of view …
Yes, I am the fox, I did not do it deliberately nor vindictive, nor with malafide intent.
All of us animals, were living happily with each other. The elephants kept to themselves, the alligators in the river. Storks had their own pond, fish to feed from the pond in plenty. Horses lived apart, while the tigers kept to themselves. All good till a tiger got hungry. Then they would raid the deer territory catch one and take it away. Panic for some time but order was restored. Back to all our territories. We foxes did the same, we raided the rabbit warren when we were hungry and took one — it was our food larder — and order returned once we left with a few for ourselves.
Now trust me, I did not know all this till after the 2 dinners I had with the stork, and several more dinners to earnest conversation.
I thought every other creature in the world was a fox. Or a hare, sort of like a fox-look-alike. As a child my fox-daddy and fox-mummy taught me that when I was hungry all I had to do was get into the rabbit den chase one down and that’s I all the learning I needed for a lifetime of self-sustenance. I had been doing that.
When I first invited the stork, I was startled. Odd guy. Standing on two legs, had wings, funny sounding and no mouth. How was he going to get the great rabbit soup I had personally prepared? If learnt a lot that day and promised never to repeat it.
Imagine to my surprise when the dinner invite was reciprocated, I had to go. I was totally shocked by the vindictive nature of the stork. A tall vessel I could not reach? Just to spite me, despite my earlier apology and not owning a tall vessel to pour the rabbit soup into?
The lesson I learnt, as a concerned fox, was that you have to look and see how other animals are. How other animals behave. What they eat. How they eat. You cannot live in a silo not understanding what the other group is up to. The human species is worse, just look at the Republicans and Democrats in the US.
