Week 5 Storytelling : Tea party

In the center of the forest, few animals gathered. There was a huge round table. On the left side of the table, a wise monkey and a goose with golden feathers sat. On the right side, a rabbit and a goose with white feather sat. They were facing each others.


"Welcome to my tea party."


A monkey started the conversation.


"Today, we will talk about the stupidity, anyone have a story to share?"


A wise monkey asked. A golden goose raised his left wing as if he was eager to share his story.


"Yes, a goose with beautiful golden feather. What is your story?"


"I want to talk about this stupid mother, whom I pitied from the bottom of my heart, before "this" happened."


The goose started a story. He explained how he wanted to help a poor family as a favor.


"Greed is the most terrifying stupidity. It makes your mind to go blind, so you will no longer see what is there for you."

The golden goose said angrily. The goose with white feathers agreed.


"I cannot agree more. This 'greed' thing is absolute non-sense. Somehow it turns our 'favors' to their 'rights'. They think what we are giving them is something they deserve."


The white goose pointed at his stomach. His stomach was stitched up as if someone had cut his belly. He was a goose who laid the golden eggs for humans, until they wanted more and decided to cut through his stomach to get more golden eggs.


"My poor duck friends!"


Rabbit shouted.


"We are not ducks"


Both Geese yelled back.


"Duck, goose, whichever you are. I pity you guys, but I do not agree with your greed thing is the most stupid thing in the world."


Rabbit spoke. The geese then asked, what was the stupidest thing in the world. Rabbit replied with the word "gullibility"


"This turtle, who came out to surface and tricked me, wanted my liver. I said I left my liver in my house, and he believed it. Of course, a slow turtle like him would have never seen my shadow after that day."


Rabbit said proudly. Monkey clapped and laughed.


"This crocodile thought I left my heart in my house. I agree, gullibility is the stupidest thing in the world!"


The geese shook their heads. They could not agree. All of them started to argue to decide what was the stupidest thing.

Their argument lasted quite awhile. They decided to ask someone else to decide. They found a wolf who had a body of fish in his mouth. They stopped him and asked which was the stupidest thing in the world; gullibility or greed.


The wolf stared at them for a second. He shrug his shoulders.


"I do not know which one is more stupid, but I can tell you the stupidest thing you can do is to ask a wolf to divide a fish."


His eyes pointed at his fish. As he left with laughter.

(A wolf by Jordan Crowe)

Author's note: Three of these characters or animals are from the stories of the Jakata's Tale. Two of the animals such as a rabbit and the goose were from the other folktale from other culture. However, although characters are different type of animals, the stories from both culture is very similar. The monkey tricked the crocodile with his heart and the rabbit tricked the turtle with his liver. Both geese produced something golden for their humans but humans wanted more, which eventually made them lose what the geese were offering to humans. The wolf is the story that I have never heard of similar story with. For his story, he went out to haunt a fish, but when he got there two otters asked the wolf to split the fish for them because they could not decide who should get the better part of the fish: the head. In the original story, the wolf took entire body of the fish and gave them the head and the tail. Only head and tail without any meat of the body! I thought that was hilarious and I thought those otters were quite stupid. I wanted to write the story over the similar characters gather to have a chat. 

Bibliography: Jataka's Tale written by Ellen Babbit