A tortoise in a pond and a fox in a nearby den were good friends. Once when they were chatting of this and that by the pond, a leopard arrived on the scene. The fox fled in panic.

The tortoise, poor thing, couldn’t move fast enough to hide or escape. With one leap, the leopard grabbed him with his mouth and settled down under a tree to make a meal of him. But neither his teeth nor his claws could make a dent in the hard shell of the tortoise.

The fox was watching the leopard’s struggles from his den and thought of a way to save the tortoise. So he came out, approached the leopard, all courtesy and innocence, and said, “I know an easy way to crack the shell of that tortoise. Just throw him into the water. He will soak in it, and the water will soften the shell in a few minutes. Try it.”

The foolish leopard said, “Never thought of it. What a good idea!” and threw the tortoise into the pond. What more could the tortoise have wished for?

A folk story from Kerala, sourced from Folktales from India by AK Ramanujan.

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