A cormorant ate very well, his meals supplied for him by every pond and stream in the vicinity.
However, he grew old, and found his eyes no longer strong enough to plumb as heretofore the waters.
Now, every cormorant supports himself. Ours, having neither traps nor nets, began, the first time in his life, to suffer want.
But hunger is a master strategist.
He told a crayfish sitting on the shore to warn his friends; in eight days’ time, he said, the owner of these pools would empty them of fish.
The crayfish spread the news. In haste the piscine parliament convened, in haste dispatched a deputation to the bird.
“How come you by this knowledge?” asked the fish. “What proof have you? How sure are you? What help is there? What should we do?”
“Move someplace else,” was his suggestion.
“Move! But how?”
“I know a secret pond, by nature made, remote, unvisited by treacherous men. I guess that I could carry you, one at a time . . . Move there, and save yourselves.”
The fish believed this prophet, who transported them by air to their new home—a shallow, crowded bog, from which with ease again he plucked them, one by one, at appetite’s demand.
They would, in fairness, hardly have been better treated by human fishermen. This stomach makes as good a grave as that. And life is short; what matters living one day less or more?
It’s best to never trust a carnivore.