I found this little story in my files. I adapted it from Aesop for a participation story. It's easy to tell with children because of the repetition.
Once in the days before we were born, there lived a Rabbit was very popular with the other animals. All of them claimed to be her friend. One day she heard dogs running and barking and she was afraid.
“My friends will help me escape!” she thought. She hurried up to the horse.
“Please carry me on your back, away from these ferocious dogs!”
But the horse said, “I am very busy. You have so many friends, one of them will surely help.”
The rabbit ran to the bull. “Please chase away these terrible dogs with your big, sharp horns.”
The bull replied, “I am very busy. You have so many friends, one of them will surely help.”
Poor Rabbit! She ran as fast as she could to the goat.
“Please goat, you have good horns. Chase these dogs away for me!”
The goat said, “I am very busy. You have so many friends, one of them will surely help.”
The terrified Rabbit scurried to the ram, who was grazing with the other sheep. “Ram, please help me! Those dogs will eat me!”
The ram thought about it, but he knew that dogs sometimes ate sheep as well as rabbits. He said, “I am very busy. You have so many friends, one of them will surely help.”
The Rabbit ran to her last friend, the baby calf. "Please help me, calf!"
The calf thought, “I am so small, and if those bigger animals could not help, how can I?” So he said, “I am very busy. You have so many friends, one of them will surely help.”
By this time the hounds were very close near. Rabbit cried,
“Sometimes having many friends is worse than having no friends at all!”
And she took off running as fast as she could, popped into her rabbit hole and escaped—all by herself.
Good 'ol Aesop indeed! It is amazing how the basis of so many of our fables and stories came from one place. I once saw a wonderful piece in the theatre - A ton of the fables set as a stage work, with all the gore left in, but done creatively. Kids loved it.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah! Old stories include gore matter-of-factly. It is how it was in those times--many African/Eastern stories contain references to scatalogical material that would be taboo here, but in their worlds this is part of everyday life (and we can't say it's not part of ours!--we just don't talk about it or use it as building material, etc)
ReplyDeleteOld stories can be offiensive to modern sensibilities, which I think is so funy given the violence of video games and TV shows like Cops and others. Go figure.