The Fox and the Pheasants

The Fox and the Pheasants is a fable by Aesop that illustrates the consequences of greed and lack of satisfaction. It tells the story of a fox that discovers a group of pheasants, intending to make a meal out of them. However, rather than being content with one, the fox cannot resist trying to catch more, ending up losing all of them. The fable ends with the moral - 'Greed often over-reaches itself'.

• Children

								
One moonlight evening as Master Fox was taking his usual stroll
in the woods, he saw a number of Pheasants perched quite out of
his reach on a limb of a tall old tree. The sly Fox soon found a
bright patch of moonlight, where the Pheasants could see him
clearly; there he raised himself up on his hind legs, and began a
wild dance. First he whirled 'round and 'round like a top, then
he hopped up and down, cutting all sorts of strange capers. The
Pheasants stared giddily. They hardly dared blink for fear of
losing him out of their sight a single instant.


Now the Fox made as if to climb a tree, now he fell over and lay
still, playing dead, and the next instant he was hopping on all
fours, his back in the air, and his bushy tail shaking so that it
seemed to throw out silver sparks in the moonlight.

By this time the poor birds' heads were in a whirl. And when the
Fox began his performance all over again, so dazed did they
become, that they lost their hold on the limb, and fell down one
by one to the Fox.

Too much attention to danger may cause us to fall victims to
it.
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