Heed the Warning in This Aesop Fable

Andy Snyder|August 2, 2022

Ohhh… we’re feisty this morning.

We’re going after not only the mainstream media but also those dopes from the seventh century who failed to tell the whole story.

When your money is on the line, no story deserves to go untold.

We’ve told you about our bottle-fed lambs. We wrote about their addiction to handouts and how, even after the bottle is taken away, they always tend to act differently from the rest of the flock.

Your fellow readers lit up our mailbag with kudos in response.

“Tell us more,” they said.

“We love the farm stories,” they professed.

“Tell folks about ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper,'” one reader wrote in.

Ah… now there’s a story that needs to be told – the real story, though, not the half-assed version we tell our kids.

No. Aesop’s little tale has grown over the years.

It’s now a tale about money, government and a society gone mad.

You see, ants and grasshoppers have some mortal enemies. There are birds, bears, frogs, lizards… and even foxes and shrews… not to mention floods, fires, snow and hail.

As Aesop alludes to, the ant and grasshopper populations would be lost without some protection.

That’s where his story leaves off… with the little critters about to make a very big decision.

With not enough food to go around, the grasshoppers and all the ants gathered one chilly Friday night and held a very important meeting. They shouted, cussed and debated all night long, until they finally came to a decision.

They’d befriend the little girl who lived nearby and put her in charge of their safety.

She was a sweet young girl who just wanted to protect the little critters and let them be.

All went well until one day… a huge thunderstorm roared overhead.

The rain came down so fiercely that a gully washed through the center of their empire.

The ants lost nearly a winter’s worth of their larder. It all washed downstream.

“We need help, little girl,” they cried. “We’ve lost all of our food.”

The grasshoppers wept.

“Without the ants’ wares, we’ll all starve to death in a few months,” one promised.

The little girl twirled her long, blond curls. “I think I have a solution,” she said.

“My brother is big and strong,” she said. “Just this one time, I’ll have him raid the farmer’s pantry and bring you back some food. But I’ll have to pay him so he doesn’t tell on me. You guys owe me.”

That sounded great, the bugs all agreed.

The grasshoppers went back to making music while the ants started to rebuild. Well, most of them did, at least.

“If the boy is getting us food,” one young ant was heard whispering to another, “why do we need to rebuild?”

“Yeah,” his pal responded, “let’s go tap our feet to the grasshoppers’ tune.”

Off they went.

Again, all was well for a while. But then a drought slowly dried up all the land.

“Little girl, little girl,” the ants cried. “We’ve got nothing to drink and all of our food is shriveling.”

“Oh my,” the girl, now in her teens, said. “This is getting bad. I’ll send my brother back to the farmer’s pantry. And I’ll hire my boyfriend and his cousins to dig out a trench from his pond.”

“That’s swell,” the grasshoppers said. “Here’s a tune just for you and all of them.”

The ants loved the tune so much, many of them sat and listened for hours… totally forgetting their duties.

When the trench was complete and the pond water was released, it roared right through the center of them all. They had failed to build the levee they needed.

The little girl was getting upset.

“This is getting ridiculous, you guys,” she scoffed. “I’m setting some serious rules. You’ll eat what I give you and drink what I pour. Don’t like it? Talk to my boyfriend and his cousins.”

“That’s horrible,” a grumpy grasshopper cried.

“Let’s protest,” another shouted.

“What good will it do,” a skeptical ant asked. “We’ve got no choice but to eat the scraps.”

“No way,” said an independent young ant. “I’m leaving and finding a new place to live. Who’s coming with me?”

And just like that, the once-thriving ant and grasshopper metropolis split in two. The ants marched and the grasshoppers sprang and leapt to a new land filled with lush grass near a fresh, trickling spring.

It was heaven as the grasshoppers played while the ants worked…

But then… thunder roared in the distance. The rain was coming.

The oldest and wisest ant gulped down the knot in his throat as he looked up and saw a young blond boy bending over and grinning.

“I’ll help you,” the freckle-faced boy said. “I’ve got lots of good food.”

We don’t know how the story ends. We’re in the midst of it now.

But we do know the moral Aesop penned into his original tale – the 373rd in his series…

Dance when it’s time to dance, and prepare when it’s time to prepare.

Right now, it’s time to prepare.

There are rumors that the little boy has a magnifying glass in his back pocket.