Page 23 - Moral Stories Vol 1

Once a deer was eating wild fruit when he heard an owl call, “haak, haak”, and a cricket cry, “wat”. He got frightened and he fled. In his flight he ran through the trees up into the mountains and into streams. In one of the streams the deer stepped upon a small fish and crushed it almost to death. Then the fish complained to the court, and the deer, owl, cricket, and fish had a lawsuit. In the trail came out this evidence:
As the deer fled, he ran into some dry grass, and the seed fell into the eye of a wild chicken, and the pain of the seed in the eye of the chicken caused it to fly up against a nest of red ants. Alarmed, the red ants flew out to do battle, and in their haste, bit a mongoose.
The mongoose ran into a vine of wild fruit and shook several pieces of it on the head of a hermit who sat thinking under a tree. “Why did you, O fruit, fall on my head?” cried the hermit. The fruit answered, “We did not wish to fall; a mongoose ran against our vine and threw us down”. And the hermit asked, “O mongoose, why did you throw the fruit?”
The mongoose answered: “I did not wish to throw down the fruit, but the red ants bit me, and I ran against the vine”. The hermit asked, “O ants, why did you bit the mongoose?” The red ants replied, “The hen flew against our nest and angered us”.
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