There was once a fox who always liked to feast on anything she could find. One day she was walking past a vineyard where some beautiful large grapes of wine had just ripened. They were so blue that the fox got a terrible craving to taste them. They looked very sweet.
The fox reached out but could not reach the grapes. It was hanging too high. She tried to jump, but it still wasn’t enough. She tried to climb up the fence, but the fence was old and the pales were cracking under the weight of the fox. The fox was jumping, climbing and falling all over the place just to reach the grape. But it was all in vain. The grapes grew too high.
The fox was panting like she’d just run a marathon. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth as she panted and panted, ruffling her fur, but to no avail. Finally, the fox hung up her tail and walked away, defeated.
“So what,” said the fox to herself, “the grapes were as sour as vinegar anyway. Even if I had gone up there, I still wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”
But the fox was wrong. The grapes were sweet. And at the bottom of her heart she knew it, but she deliberately spoke bad about them so she wouldn’t be sorry that she couldn’t reach them. Ever since then, when someone speaks bad about something just because they can’t have it, they call it “sour grapes.” Even if it’s sweet and nice.
