A Heron was walking sedately along the bank of a stream, his eyes on the clear water, and his long neck and pointed bill ready to snap up a likely morsel for his breakfast. The clear water swarmed with fish, but Master Heron was hard to please that morning.
“No small fry for me,” he said. “Such scanty fare is not fit for a Heron.”
Now a fine young Perch swam near.
“No indeed,” said the Heron. “I wouldn’t even trouble to open my beak for anything like that!”
As the sun rose, the fish left the shallow water near the shore and swam below into the cool depths toward the middle. The Heron saw no more fish, and very glad was he at last to breakfast on a tiny Snail.
Credits
Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, thought to have lived around the 6th century BCE, whose fables have shaped moral literature across the world for over two thousand years. "The Heron" is one of his many animal fables that use a single, ironic reversal to deliver its lesson — in this case, that excessive pride and pickiness can leave us worse off than if we had simply been content.
