Collected Fables

by James Thurber

  “Oh, sure,” said the tigress as she went to look after her young, one of whom, a male, very like his father, had got an imaginary thorn in his paw.

  The tiger prowled through the jungle till he came to the lion’s den. “Come out,” he roared, “and greet the king of beasts! The king is dead, long live the king!”

  Inside the den, the lioness woke her mate. “The king is here to see you,” she said.

  “What king?” he inquired, sleepily.

  “The king of beasts,” she said.

  “I am the king of beasts,” roared Leo, and he charged out of the den to defend his crown against the pretender.

  It was a terrible fight, and it lasted until the setting of the sun. All the animals of the jungle joined in, some taking the side of the tiger and others the side of the lion. Every creature from the aardvark to the zebra took part in the struggle to overthrow the lion or to repulse the tiger, and some did not know which they were fighting for, and some fought for both, and some fought whoever was nearest, and some fought for the sake of fighting.

  “What are we fighting for?” someone asked the aardvark.

  “The old order,” said the aardvark.

  “What are we dying for?” someone asked the zebra.

  “The new order,” said the zebra.

  When the moon rose, fevered and gibbous, it shone upon a jungle in which nothing stirred except a macaw and a cockatoo, screaming in horror. All the beasts were dead except the tiger, and his days were numbered and his time was ticking away. He was monarch of all he surveyed, but it didn’t seem to mean anything.

  MORAL: You can’t very well be king of beasts if there aren’t any.

  The Chipmunk and His Mate

  A MALE CHIPMUNK could sleep like a top or a log or a baby as soon as his head hit the pillow, but his mate was always as wakeful as an owl or a nightwatchman or a burglar. When he turned the lights off, she would turn them on again and read, or worry, or write letters in her head, or wonder where things were. She was often drowsy after supper, and sometimes nodded in her chair, but she became wide awake as soon as her head hit the pillow. She would lie there wondering if her mate had left his pistol in the nursery, what she had done with the Christmas tree ornaments, and whether or not she had left the fire on under the prunes. She was sure the wastebasket was smoldering in the living room, that she had left the kitchen door unlocked, and that someone was tiptoeing around downstairs.

  The male chipmunk always slept until the sun was high, but his mate heard all the clocks strike all the hours. She could doze off in the daytime with a glass in her hand, or while her mate was reading aloud, or when his boss came to call, but as soon as she got in bed, she began writing letters in her head, or wondering if she had put the cat out, or where her handbag was, or why she hadn’t heard from her mother.

  One day she fell asleep while driving the family car, and, after a decent interval, the male chipmunk married her sister. He could still sleep like a top or a log or a baby, but his new mate just lay there as wide awake as an owl or a nightwatchman or a burglar, hearing intruders, smelling something burning, wondering if her mate had let his insurance lapse. One enchanted evening, across a crowded room, he met a stranger, an eight o’clock sleepy-time gal. They ran away to Maracaibo together, where they slept happily ever after. The second mate lay awake every night, wondering what the chipfrump had that she didn’t have and what he saw in her, and whether she herself had put out the milk bottles or left the water running in the kitchen sink.

  MORAL: A man’s bed is his cradle, but a woman’s is often her rack.

  The Weaver and the Worm

  A WEAVER WATCHED in wide-eyed wonder a silkworm spinning its cocoon in a white mulberry tree.

  “Where do you get that stuff?” asked the admiring weaver.

  “Do you want to make something out of it?” inquired the silkworm, eagerly.

  Then the weaver and the silkworm went their separate ways, for each thought the other had insulted him. We live, man and worm, in a time when almost everything can mean almost anything, for this is the age of gobbledygook, double-talk, and gudda.

  MORAL: A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn’t make any sense.

  Two Dogs

  ONE SULTRY MOONLESS night, a leopard escaped from a circus and slunk away into the shadows of a city. The chief of police dogs assigned to the case a German shepherd named Plunger and a plainclothes bloodhound named Plod. Plod was a slow, methodical sleuth, but his uniformed partner was restless and impatient. Plod set the pace until Plunger snapped, “We couldn’t catch a turtle this way,” and bounded along the trail like a whippet. He got lost. When Plod found him, half an hour later, the bloodhound said, “It is better to get somewhere slowly than nowhere fast.”

  “Repose is for the buried,” said the police dog. “I even chase cats in my dreams.”

  “I don’t,” said the bloodhound. “Out of scent, out of mind.”

  As they went along, each in his own way, through the moonlessness, they exchanged further observations on life.

  “He who hunts and turns away may live to hunt another day,” commented Plod.

  “Runs away, you mean,” sneered Plunger.

  “I never run,” said the bloodhound. “It’s no good trailing a cat when you’re out of breath, especially if the cat isn’t. I figured that out myself. They call it instinct.”

  “I was taught to do what I do, and not to do what I don’t,” the police dog said. “They call it discipline. When I catch cats, cats stay caught,” he added.

  “I don’t catch them, I merely find out where they are,” the bloodhound said quietly.

  The two dogs suddenly made out a great dark house looming in front of them at the end of a lane. “The trail ends right here, twenty feet from that window,” the bloodhound said, sniffing a certain spot. “The leopard must have leaped into the house from here.”

  The two dogs stared into the open window of the dark and silent house.

  “I was taught to jump through the open windows of dark houses,” said Plunger.

  “I taught myself not to,” said Plod. “I wouldn’t grab that cat if I were you. I never grab a leopard unless it is a coat.” But Plunger wasn’t listening.

  “Here goes,” he said jauntily, and he jumped through the window of the dark and silent house. Instantly there was a racket that sounded to the keen ears of the bloodhound like a police dog being forcibly dressed in women’s clothes by a leopard, and that is precisely what it was. All of a moment, Plunger, dressed in women’s clothes from hat to shoes, with a pink parasol thrust under his collar, came hurtling out the window. “I had my knee on his chest, too,” said the bewildered police dog plaintively.

  The old sleuth sighed. “He lasteth longest and liveth best who gets not his knee on his quarry’s chest,” murmured Plod, in cloudy English but fluent Bloodhound.

  MORAL: Who would avoid life’s wriest laughter should not attain the thing he’s after.

  The Lady of the Legs

  IN A POOL near Paris there lived a frog who thought she was wonderful.

  “I have the largest lily pad, the deepest dive, the prettiest eyes, and the finest voice in the world,” she croaked.

  “You also have the most succulent legs on earth or water,” said a human voice one day. It was the voice of a renowned Parisian restaurateur, who was passing by when he heard all the bragging.

  “I do not know what succulent means,” said the frog.

  “You must have the smallest vocabulary in the world,” said the restaurateur, and the foolish frog, who took every superlative for praise, was pleased, and flushed a deeper green than ever.

  “I should like to set you before a certain celebrated bon vivant,” said the man, “a distinguished gourmet, a connoisseur of the grande haute cuisine.”

  The frog almost swooned with delight at the elegant sound of these strange words.

  “You will be served like a queen,” said the restaurateur. “Provençal. Un
der my personal supervision, of course.”

  “Tell me more,” said the rapt and rapturous frog.

  “You will be served with the most excellent vintage wine in the world,” said the man. “A great Montrachet, I should think, would be perfect.”

  “Go on,” urged the vain and foolish frog.

  “You will be talked about whenever devotees of the culinary art assemble,” said the restaurateur. “You will be remembered as the daintiest dish in the history of gastronomy.”

  At this the frog swooned in a transport of joy and an excess of misplaced self-esteem, and while she was unconscious, the renowned Parisian restaurateur deftly removed her succulent legs and took them to his restaurant, where they were prepared under his personal supervision as he had promised, and served, Provençal, with a bottle of Montrachet, to a celebrated bon vivant.

  MORAL: Fatua cruraque mox separabuntur.*

  The Kingfisher and the Phoebe

  A PROUD MOTHER phoebe who had raised two broods of fledglings in the fair weather was at first dismayed and then delighted when one of the males of the second brood refused to leave the nest and fly away like the others. “I have raised a remarkable phoebe unlike any other phoebe,” the mother bird decided. “He will become a great singer, greater than the nightingale.”

  She brought in a nightingale to teach her son to sing, and then a catbird, and then a mockingbird, but all the young phoebe could learn to sing was “Phoebe, Phoebe.” And so the mother bird sent for Dr. Kingfisher, a bird psychologist, who examined the young phoebe carefully. “This phoebe is a phoebe like any other phoebe,” he told the mother. “And all he will ever sing is ‘Phoebe, Phoebe.’”

  But the ambitious mother did not believe Dr. Kingfisher’s prognosis. “Maybe he won’t be a great singer, but he will be a great something,” she insisted. “He will take the place of the eagle on the dollar, or the canary in the gilded cage, or the cuckoo in the cuckoo clock. You just wait.”

  “I’ll wait,” said Dr. Kingfisher, and he waited. But nothing happened. The phoebe went on being a phoebe and singing “Phoebe, Phoebe” like any other phoebe, and that was all.

  MORAL: You can’t make anything out of cookie dough except cookies.

  The Turtle Who Conquered Time

  A TURTLE APPEARED in a meadow one summer’s day and attracted the attention of all the creatures in the grass and in the trees, because the date 44 B.C. was carved on his shell. “Our meadow is honored indeed,” exclaimed a grasshopper, “for our visitor is the oldest of all living creatures.”

  “We must build a pavilion in his honor,” said a frog, and the catbirds and the swallows and the other birds built a stately pleasure dome out of twigs and leaves and blossoms for the very important turtle. An orchestra of crickets played music in his honor, and a wood thrush sang. The sounds of jubilee were heard in nearby fields and woods, and as more and more creatures turned up from farther and farther away to have a look at the ancient turtle, the grasshopper decided to charge admission to the pavilion.

  “I will be the barker,” said the frog, and, with the help of the grasshopper, he composed an impressive spiel. “Yesterday and yesterday and yesterday,” it began, “creeps in this carapace from day to day to the first syllable of recorded time. This great turtle was born two thousand years ago, the year the mighty Julius Caesar died. Horace was twenty-one in 44 B.C., and Cicero had but a single year to live.” The bystanders did not seem very much interested in the turtle’s ancient contemporaries, but they gladly paid to go in and have a look at his ancient body.

  Inside the pavilion, the grasshopper continued the lecture. “This remarkable turtle is a direct descendant of one of the first families of Ooze,” he chanted. “His great-grandfather may have been the first thing that moved in the moist and muddy margins of this cooling planet. Except for our friend’s ancestors, there was nothing but coal and blobs of glob.”

  One day a red squirrel who lived in a neighboring wood dropped in to look at the turtle and to listen to the ballyhoo. “Forty-four B.C., my foot!” scoffed the squirrel, as he glared at the grasshopper. “You are full of tobacco juice, and your friend the frog is full of lightning bugs. The carving of an ancient date on the carapace of a turtle is a common childish prank. This creep was probably born no earlier than 1902.”

  As the red squirrel ranted on, the spectators who had paid to get into the pavilion began departing quietly, and there was no longer a crowd listening to the frog out front. The crickets put away their instruments and disappeared as silently as the Arabs, and the wood thrush gathered up his sheet music and flew off and did not return. The sounds of jubilee were no longer heard in the once merry meadow, and the summer seemed to languish like a dying swan.

  “I knew all the time he wasn’t two thousand years old,” admitted the grasshopper, “but the legend pleased the people, young and old, and many smiled who had not smiled for years.”

  “And many laughed who had not laughed for years,” said the frog, “and many eyes sparkled and many hearts were gay.” The turtle shed a turtle tear at this and crawled away.

  “The truth is not merry and bright,” said the red squirrel. “The truth is cold and dark. Let’s face it.” And, looking smug and superior, the iconoclast scampered impudently back to his tree in the wood. From the grass of the meadow voices once carefree and gay joined in a rueful and lonely chorus, as if someone great and wonderful had died and was being buried.

  MORAL: Oh, why should the shattermyth have to be a crumplehope and a dampenglee?

  The Lion and the Lizard

  A LION AND a lizard kept the halls where once a prince had slept. The prince had died, as even princes do, and his palace had fallen to rats and ruin. The lion destroyed the rats, but he could never find the lizard, who lived in a crevice in the wall. There was royal food in the ruined kitchen, and royal wine in the ruined cellar, but the lion got it all, for the lizard was afraid to emerge from his hiding place. So the lion got fatter and fatter, and drunker and drunker, and the lizard grew thinner and thinner, and soberer and soberer. Weeks went by, and the weeds grew and the walls crumbled, as the lion ate six meals a day, washing them down with a total of eighteen different wines. One night, as the tawny master of the palace was topping off his sixth meal of the day with a tankard of brandy, he fell asleep on his golden chair at the head of the ornate table. The lizard, with his remaining strength, which wasn’t much, crawled up on the table and tried to nibble a crumb, but he was too weak to eat. The lion, awakened by a tiny tinkle of spoons, tried to crush the unwelcome guest with one blow of his mighty paw, but he was sated and obese, and his paw was no longer mighty. He passed away in his golden chair, spilling the last of the brandy, as the lizard gave up the ghost among the crumbs and silver.

  MORAL: He who dies of a surfeit is as dead as he who starves.

  The Tigress and Her Mate

  PROUDFOOT, A TIGER, became tired of his mate, Sabra, a few weeks after they had set up housekeeping, and he fell to leaving home earlier and earlier in the morning, and returning later and later at night. He no longer called her “Sugar Paw,” or anything else, but merely clapped his paws when he wanted anything, or, if she was upstairs, whistled. The last long speech he ever made to her at breakfast was “What the hell’s the matter with you? I bring you rice and peas and coconut oil, don’t I? Love is something you put away in the attic with your wedding dress. Forget it.” And he finished his coffee, put down the Jungle News, and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Sabra asked.

  “Out,” he said. And after that, every time she asked him where he was going, he said, “Out,” or “Away,” or “Hush.”

  When Sabra became aware of the coming of what would have been, had she belonged to the chosen species, a blessed event, and told Proudfoot about it, he snarled, “Growp.” He had now learned to talk to his mate in code, and “growp” meant “I hope the cubs grow up to be xylophone players or major generals.” Then he went away, as all male tige
rs do at such a moment, for he did not want to be bothered by his young until the males were old enough to box with and the females old enough to insult. While waiting for the unblessed event to take place, he spent his time fighting water buffaloes and riding around with plainclothes tigers in a prowl car.

  When he finally came home, he said to his mate, “Eeps,” meaning “I’m going to hit the sack, and if the kids keep me awake by yowling, I’ll drown them like so many common house kittens.” Sabra stalked to the front door of their house, opened it, and said to her mate, “Scat.” The fight that took place was terrible but brief. Proudfoot led with the wrong paw, was nailed with the swiftest right cross in the jungle, and never really knew where he was after that. The next morning, when the cubs, male and female, tumbled eagerly down the stairs demanding to know what they could do, their mother said, “You can go in the parlor and play with your father. He’s the tiger rug just in front of the fireplace. I hope you’ll like him.”

  The children loved him.

  MORAL: Never be mean to a tiger’s wife, especially if you’re the tiger.

  The Magpie’s Treasure

  ONE DAY WHEN the sun made everything that glitters glitter and everything that sparkles sparkle, a magpie picked up something from a gutter and carried it off to her nest. A crow and a rabbit had seen her swoop down and fly away, and each decided she had found something good to eat. “I’m sure it’s a carrot,” said the rabbit, “for I heard her say something about carrots.”

  “I saw it glitter,” said the crow, “and it glittered edibly, like a yellow grain of corn.”