they call for another meeting. All the snails gathered once again in the main square to vent their concerns. Everyone had something to say but no one had a solution.
A prophet who had spent many years in the cave of a mountain happened to be sitting on a bench nearby. Upon seeing how dry and crackling the ground was, and how unhappy and worried the snails were, he said:
“Come with me. I will take you up to a mountain and show you a place where water abound and the grass grows taller than your shell.”
The young ones opened their eyes wide and voiced their enthusiasm. The old ones exchanged suspicious, sometimes even, mocking glances. They tried to pacify the young snails but failed. The young were just too many. Soon the village was abandoned, the old snails put in carts along with the children. The young snails led the way, and off they followed the prophet.
They crawled and lugged up the hills for a long time. The snails being snails walked slowly, and even though the prophet was old and limping, they were unable to keep up with him. They lagged way behind and soon lost sight of the prophet. To make the matter worse, they got lost, and there was nothing to eat or drink in sight. The mountainside was even worse than their valley. The old snails grew nervous and protested, but the confidence and drive of the young ones won over the rest of the villagers. Ahead, they went with resilience.
Eventually their path split in two. The young snails could not agree. Some preached to take the left path, others the right one. The children were hungry and thirsty, and cried. Unable to silence the, the parents decided together to howl for the missing prophet, who was the only one who knew the location of the bountiful place. Hopefully he will hear them.
In the meantime, the old snails from the top of their carts noticed that miles away it rained down the valley once again. The young snails looked at each other with anger. The old snails bragged with delight. At this point, the very old and lame prophet who had noticed their absence and heard their screams appeared in front of them. The young snails accused him of having lied to them. There was no water and grass growing taller than their shell on this mountain. This dream place probably did not even exist.
The prophet raised his hand to silence them.
“This is exactly what I promise you,” he said. “Now let me show you a place where water abound and the grass grows taller than your shell.”
He then pointed his long hooked and wise finger with great authority towards the valley where all the snails came from.
The Wolf Must Run to the Market (#25)
“Why don’t you run to the market and get us some fresh food,” said a mother wolf, taking a deep breath at the sad expression of her three starving cubs. They sat around the table, whining, hitting the table with their fists, one of them laying his head in his empty plate, while father wolf, feet up on the coffee table read the newspaper. Knowing the tone of his wife’s voice too well, he put his newspaper aside and looked over to his hungry cubs.
“Can’t they eat a bowl of cereals?” he asked. The mother wolf shook her head vigorously. “These are wolf children not birds!”
Mother wolf quelled her husband look with a silent glare. Seeing that he had no choice, father wolf rose from his armchair and slipped on his country shoes. “I’m a good daddy, and I’m going to the market and get us some fresh meat to feed all these little hungry mouths,” he said jubilant to hide his guilt for reading the newspaper instead of being out in the country hunting.
Soon, riding his bicycle, he crossed fields and hills. He looked at the blue sky, the sun hitting hard on the road. The town was still nowhere in sight. He grew thirsty and took a detour to stop by a river to drink some fresh cool water.
A young man with a thin moustache was leaning against the door of his truck, half asleep. The truck had a flat tired and was packed full with dogs in cages. The dogs grew mad upon seeing the wolf and barked their lungs out. The wolf was intimidated, but he approached the young man. “Why aren’t you taking these dogs away? They are loud and seem agitated.”
“I must have driven on a piece of broken glass,” said the young man dusting his clothes. “I’m not strong enough to unscrew the bolts of this punctured wheel. Poor me, now my bosses will beat me up for being late.”
The wolf looked at his watch and said, “I’m a good dad and would hate to see my child in this plight.” So he helped the young man change the tire. The wolf’s strength was beyond belief, and he unscrewed the bolts in no time. “Sorry, I can’t give you a ride,” shouted the young man from his truck window. “These dogs are hungry and thirsty and must be fed.” The barking of the dogs could be heard in the next town as the truck drove away.
The wolf waved from a distance and got back on his bicycle, eager to cross the country to get to the market in town. In his rush, he forgot the broken glass on the path, and within yards, his bicycle had a flat. Unlike the young man and his truck, the wolf had no spare tire. The wheel lay flat on the ditch, and he still had a long way to go. Across the field, he caught sight of a wooden hut and decided to go and ask for help.
The hut was full of hunters on a coffee break, gathered around the fireplace, looking sullen and quiet. The wolf at first hesitated because he needed help with his bike, but he felt bad for the hunters. “I surely would not like my children to grow up and be so sad,” he thought. “Why grown men like you are looking so unhappy?” he asked them gathering his courage.
The hunters raised and shook their head at the same time and explained that their dogs had not arrived and without them they could not hunt, and if they could not hunt, they could feed their family. The wolf scratched his head to see how he could help them.
“I have seen a truck full of dogs,” he stated. “But the driver drove the other way. Maybe I could catch up with him and tell him where he is waited.”
The hunters cheered and clapped in their hands. But the wolf grew worried at his generosity. “I have to rush to the market, and I may not be able to get there on time,” he confessed. One of the hunters put his arm around the wolf’s shoulders.
“Find our dogs, and we will give you a ride to the market, in the truck.”
The wolf’s eyes brighten as the prospect to be helped for helping others. The hunters loaded their riffles waiting for him to come back. The wolf rushed through the up and down the country in search of the truck with the dogs. The night was drawing near. He thoughts about his starving kids and about the hunters waiting to give him a ride.
In the distance, he heard the dogs’ bark getting closer and closer. They seem to be coming from everywhere around. Without hesitating he rushed towards them and found the dogs with the hunters holding their leash.
“There he is! There he is!” they screamed upon seeing the wolf. The wolf tried to escape, hiding inside a hollow tree he thought was a shelter. But the hollow tree was a trap, nothing but an empty dog cage disguised. The wolf got locked in. Jubilant, the hunters loaded the cage on the truck and took him to the market to be sold. As promised to his wife and cubs, the wolf got there before it closed.
A Shark in a Tank (#26)
After many years in an aquarium, a shark with razor-sharp teeth demanded to be sent back to the sea for his retirement. The owners of the aquarium disagreed and held a meeting to discuss the issue “who was going to scare the hell out of the children if they let him go?” But bending to the pressure of children, they agreed. The shark was exuberant and even didn’t mind the long plane ride back to the ocean. At long last, he was going to use his sharp white teeth he had for so long bragged about to terrorize the crowds at the aquarium. He lamented how they shone in the sun with glints of diamonds so much they were clean and unused. He warned that they cut better than twenty pairs of scissors, and crush better than twenty pairs of hammers, and tear better than twenty pairs of pliers, and everyone gasps.
When he saw the sunset shimmering on the water surface, his heart sank. Never in his life had he seen something so maje
stic and captivating. But it was getting dark rapidly. “Strange, the light goes down here. It never happened at the pool. Better wait tomorrow when the sun is high in the sky to take my first dive.” Besides the trip got him tired, and so he checked at the nearest hotel, took the best room facing the ocean so that he could enjoy its sparkling blue vastness.
Upon waking the following day, he pulled all his maps and lists of tasks and rushed to the beach. Once he got to there, an unpleasant feeling greeted him. The vast ocean’s water was a lot colder than he remembered from his youth. How was that possible? Who had changed the temperature? So cold that he thought the experience dreadful. The pool’s water was always warm.
The same day, the people on the island read on the newspaper about his coming and gathered to watch the ominous sharp-toothed shark return to the ocean. The shark showed up in a diving suit. People asked him why. He mumbled some excuse that no one understood and then flaunted his teeth so terrifyingly that no one dared ask him to repeat. So they waited in silence for him to jump back into the sea. And they waited for a long time, for feeling the sun searing his skin now high in the sky, the shark told the crowd he was not feeling well. He started to walk back to his hotel.
“Don’t
Nick Klaus's Fables Page 9