A Fable, After Aesop

Once upon a time a terrible forest fire drove all the animals in the woods down to the inside of a bend in the river. The birds took to the air and flew to the opposite bank. Some of the legged ones dove in and swam across to safety, but the others who crept or crawled, or slithered couldn’t swim or paddle. These gathered together, in great fear, with no means of escape.

One little snake, of a venomous kind, begged a large frog to carry him across the river on his back. “Please, please, kind Ranadaean Sir, Best of Batrachians, won’t you save my life, since you swim so well and easily?” wheedled the juvenile adder.

“But I fear you will bite me if I come close; you’ll kill me with your poison. No, no, I’m afraid to help you,” replied the old frog.

The snakelet answered, “Heaven forfend, dear Anuran Lord; I swear by all that’s holy, I won’t harm a wart of your handsome head. I’ll name my first hatched offspring after you. I promise the tale of your goodness and trust will be told for generations in Viperdom. There’s no time to lose; hurry! Come here and let me coil upon your back.”

Well, that big old frog repented of his mistrust; he beheld before him the spectacle of masses of creepers and crawlers beginning to charbroil, he felt a tide of mercy lift his warming heart, and he consented to remove the garrulous serpent from harm’s way, saying urgently, “Hold on as best you can; I’ll try to keep you above water.” And off they went, the frog stroking strongly, his bow wave streaming back from his nose as he surged ahead, the puff adder pup balancing on the frog’s broad green back.

When the odd couple of refugees, reptile and amphibian, arrived on the other shore, in the snake’s promised land of salvation, as it were, the good frog exclaimed enthusiastically, “Hallelujah, Brother Serpent, we made it!” And the snake struck, sinking his deadly fangs into the frog’s cervical spine just below his skull, where the back of his neck would have been, if frogs had necks.

The frog cried, “You bit me! You’re killing me! Why did you bite me, when I had just saved you from certain death? You made a holy oath! Why did you betray your word?” And the rescued puff adder, slithering away, replied simply, “Hey, I’m a snake. I bite. That’s what I do!”

The moral of the story is: Never turn your back on a snake. Not even a well-spoken one.