The Crane and the Crab

By the edge of a wide pond there lived an old crane. Once he had been a fine fisher, quick and sharp, but now he was old, and his legs were slow, and he could not catch fish the way he used to. His belly grumbled. And as he stood there hungry, a wicked little plan crept into his head.

He put on his very saddest face and stood at the water’s edge, sighing and sighing, until at last the fish swam up to ask whatever was the matter.

“Oh, my friends,” said the crane mournfully, “I have just heard the most terrible news. Fishermen are coming this way tomorrow, and they mean to throw their nets over this whole pond and catch every last one of you. I am so sorry. I have grown quite fond of you all.”

The fish were frightened out of their wits. “What shall we do? Oh, kind crane, is there nothing that can save us?”

The crane pretended to think hard. “Well,” he said slowly, “there is a fine deep lake just over the hill, where no fisherman ever goes. I am old, but I could carry you there, one at a time, in my beak. If you trust me.”

And the foolish, frightened fish trusted him.

So all that day the crane carried fish away in his beak, one by one. But he did not take them to any lake. He flew only as far as a flat sunny rock, and there he ate each fish, and spat out the bones, until the rock was piled high and white. Then back he went, smiling, for the next.

At last only the old crab was left. “Your turn, friend,” said the crane, hungrier than ever, thinking a crab would make a nice change. The crab climbed up and wrapped his legs around the crane’s neck to hold on tight, and off they flew.

But the crab was no fool. As they passed over the hill he looked down, and he saw, not a cool deep lake, but a flat rock gleaming white with the bones of every fish in the pond. And all at once he understood.

The crab did not panic. He simply tightened his strong claws around the crane’s skinny neck, tighter and tighter, until the startled crane could fly no further and came tumbling down to the ground. Then the crab climbed calmly off, and made his own slow way home to the pond, to tell the truth about what had become of all the trusting fish.

Greed had made the old crane clever. But it was the calm crab, who kept his wits and did not simply believe what he was told, who lived to see the morning.