The clever rooster

Once upon a time, there was a clever fox living in a forest. One day he was roaming around, inside the forest searching for food. Suddenly, he spotted a fine rooster seated on the highest branch of a tree. The rooster was looking at the dense forest surrounding him.

The fox realised that he could not climb up the tree to kill and eat the rooster, so he started thinking,
“How can I get this rooster and have him for my meal? If l request him to come down from the tree, he won’t trust my motives.”

The fox thought of a trick and cunningly said to the rooster,
“Dear friend, why are you sitting so high up on the tree? Are you afraid of someone? Do you not know what the king of the forest has decided in a meeting with all the animals today?”

“No, I have no clue. Can you please explain to me what the king said?” asked the rooster.

The fox continued, “The decision he made says that from now onwards, animals and birds are not allowed to kill one another for meals. So, no big fish is allowed to eat the smaller fish.”

The rooster sensed something fishy about this. “This couldn’t be true,” the rooster thought.

“Does that mean the lions, tigers, and leopards will begin feeding on grass from today?” the rooster asked the fox.

The fox had no answer for this. But he didn’t want to give up easily.

“I can see you’re not assured, my dear friend. Come down. Let us go to the king and clarify all your doubts. He will provide you with all the answers.” the clever fox replied.

The rooster was intelligent enough to recognise the fox’s trick and said,
“You are correct dear fox. We should go to the king and clarify this with him. Why don’t we take some more friends with us? It will be beneficial for everyone if they know about this decision.”

Thinking that he had succeeded in his strategy to fool the rooster, the fox said to him,
“Yes, yes, why not? We can take other animals too. But first, you have to come down so that we can look for them.”

The fox was all excited as he was expecting the rooster to come down the tree.

“We are lucky. We do not have to search for our other animal friends. I can see a few of our friends coming this way. We can take them along,” suddenly the rooster said.

“Oh, that’s good! But who are these animals?” the fox asked.

“I can see some hounds coming this way. I hope they are your great friends?” replied the rooster.

“What? Hounds!” the fox yelled in panic.

He started running for his life.

“Why are you running? You just informed me that all animals and birds had become good friends with one another,” asked the rooster.

“Yes. But the hounds might not have heard the king’s decision,” saying this, the fox ran away into the dense forest.

The rooster laughed loudly at the fox’s stupid strategy to get him down. All the other birds relaxing on the tree cheered and applauded the rooster’s humour.

Moral 

Smartness always saves you from danger.