In which we conclude the Gift of Stories with a metaphor for all

White Wing’s Escape (India)
Early one morning, a hunter wanted to catch birds.

He spread out a net near a banyan tree where the birds like to sit.  Then he scattered grains of rice on the ground near the net, and he took himself away behind the tree to wait.

Soon, the ringdoves above noticed the rice below. 

Led by White Wing, the king of the ringdoves, they swooped down to eat up the rice, but as soon as they landed and began to eat, the hunter pulled on the net, capturing all of the birds.

The ringdove king did not panic as he saw the hunter coming towards them with a club. 

Instead, he said, “Do not panic, my friends!  There is a way to escape this net, but we must all agree to work together.”

When White Wing called to them, all of the birds flapped their wings upward together at the same time, and lifted the net into the sky with their bodies.


Thus, the hunter lost all of the birds, and the net too, which flew away with them, and was never seen again.

Comments

  1. During my time in Germany I have only held one real job and as I sat at my computer typing online help for software, a ringnecked dove pair started to make a nest in the tree outside my 2nd story window. They tried and tried and failed. I had never seen a bird try to make a nest, and never have I seen a pair try and fail. She sat and sat and the male would weave things around her but they ended up on the ground next to our fancy self-parking car garage. I was transfixed but over time I think their relationship was stronger than their nest, so they left. Nests are so precise, I found one in the woods recently, perfect! But I hope those doves got out of Cologne/Koeln, there is nothing good there.

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  2. When I worked at the Kenmore Library, there were cameras attached to the trees in the adjacent swamp. In spring, herons would come and build their nests (always in the same trees, so the cameras were pointing at the right spots). One year there was a young couple building a nest. He would bring sticks and wrap them around her, and she would tell him how wonderful he was. Then, when he flew away to get more sticks, she would completely re-arrange the stuff he'd just laid down. He'd bring back more sticks, lather rinse repeat. It was hilarious. The whole neighborhood would come to the library every afternoon to watch them.

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