Once upon a time there was a fox who lurked for little rabbits. She was hungry and wanted to eat them. But a deer, the guardian of the forest, appeared and chased the fox away, flicking its antlers. The fox ran away from him until it reached the river. The current of the water was quite swift, but when she looked back, she saw the deer chasing after her. Without further hesitation, she jumped into the water and began swimming to the other side.
It wasn’t easy, though. The swift current kept pulling the fox down into the depths, but eventually the fox reached the other shore with a mighty sweep of her paws. There she lay down in the grass and panted, exhausted.
Soon a swarm of flies appeared, feeding on the animals’ blood. The flies settled on the fox and began to suck its blood. The fox was still too weak to run away from them, so it lay still and quiet.
A hedgehog walked by. When he saw this, he immediately felt sorry for the fox.
“Let me drive the flies away,” he said to the fox.
“No, no!” cried the fox. “Please don’t disturb them. They’re full, they won’t drink any more of my blood. But if you chase them away, I’m afraid another hungry swarm will come and it will suck the rest of my blood.”
“I see,” says the hedgehog, “you would rather suffer a small evil than risk a greater one.”
Here the amous fable ends. But not ours, because our hedgehog was a clever hedgehog. He went to the edge of the woods where the people who rescue wild animals lived and led them to the injured fox. The people healed the fox and released it back into the forest, where today it lives happily with its new friend the hedgehog.
