THE FOOLISH FOX

One fine day a fox was out walking.

By and by he came to a fence. He looked through the fence and saw some ripe grapes.

“I shall have grapes for my supper,” he said.

“I will come back and get them when everyone is asleep.”

The fox came back at night, but he could not get the grapes.

They were on the other side of the fence.

He could not crawl through the fence.

He tried and tried, but at last he had to give it up.

Then he said, “I am so tired that I can not go home now.

I will sleep for a little while.”

The fox went to sleep and dreamed that he was very thin.

He dreamed that he crawled through the fence.

When he waked up, he said, “I will go home and grow thin.

I will not eat anything.

Then I shall grow so thin that I can crawl through the fence.”

The fox did not eat anything for three days.

He grew very thin. But he grew very hungry, too. He went back and crawled through the fence.

Then he ate all the grapes that he wanted.

He ate so many that he grew very fat.

The fox was so fat that he could not crawl through the fence to go home.

“How foolish I have been!” he said.

“Now I must grow thin again.

I can not eat anything.

Oh, where can I hide while I am growing thin?

I will hide under the grape vines in the corner.”

The fox hid under the grape vines for three days.

He did not eat anything, and he grew very thin.

Then he crawled through the fence and went home.

“I will never be so foolish again,” he said.

——A Hebrew Tale