The Shrew

Eyes still closed, the shrew said to her mate, “Get up, lazy lout, you’re late for foraging. Get going now.”

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, look who’s still dormant while I’ve already gotten up and put on my shirt.”

“Then don’t just stand there, stop the jawing and go. That’s you, always hemming, always hawing. And you are,” she added mysteriously.

“I’m what?” 

“A monkey’s uncle, and grand-uncle of man. That was no slip of speech—you were bragging, and for the worst reason. So much began to go wrong when your side of the family evolved into simian and then humankind. Our side,” she said imperiously, “never would have started that whole disastrous line. Whatever prompted you and yours to go climb a tree?”

“Probably trying to get away from the nagging, scoffing of your whole side,” he murmured.

“I heard that crack,” she cried, “insinuating that I’m a genetic scold? when all I am is a necessary corrector, wearing myself out for your own good. O, I need to lie here, you’re giving me one of my migraines. I’ll die without a fit appreciator or provider. O, you!”

“I didn’t do a word!”

“Listen to yourself, how you get mixed up, the same old jabbering fool, and if I don’t stop you, you’ll go on carping, carping and harping, harping and carping—I don’t know how I bear it! Just go! That’ll stop your incessant nagging torrent.”

Moral: Whenever someone is after you, repeatedly and hotheadedly, too, there’s not the least doubt it’s themselves they are really talking about.

Two Wild Pigs

Two wild pigs, one who knew it all and another who didn’t, approached a strange new mud hole.

“Let’s go,” said the first, “it looks great.”

“I don’t know,” said the other, “I just don’t know.”

“What’s there to know?” asked the first. “This pool is big and slimy, so-o-o inviting. I’m itching all over and need a mud bath. Let’s go!”

All the other one said was, still, “I don’t know. Let’s talk. Remember about the poisonous mushrooms?”

“Let’s stop all this palaver,” said the first, “and just jump in, beneath that luscious mud. I’m gonna flop and wallow.”

“I don’t know, it looks funny. Too tan, too bubbly. Maybe we should throw something in.”

“What are you talking? A mud-hole is a mud-hole,” said the other. His mite-strewn back made him antsy, he was straining to wade and rub, doubly eager to take the plunge. “Let’s just go! I know for sure it’ll do us good.”

“The last time you were sure was with those dogs, those lion-hounds.”

“Oh, those—I didn’t realize they hated hogs, too.”

“You lost half your tail before we got away.”

“Never mind all that, jimminy creepers! Let’s jump right in this shallow pool.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I know...and here I go,” and he did—you could say he swan-dived, but he wasn’t a swan, and he hit that pool and swiftly sank from view (because, of course, it was record-breaking quicksand that sucked him under) and he was gone.

The other stood there; what could he do? The all-knowing other pig, his friend, disappeared directly in that slick. He lay now, in all his certainty, somewhere at the bottom of that quagmire. The live one stayed a long moment, then turned and left.

Moral: Follow the one who doesn’t know so much, because he knows enough not to follow the one who knows it all.