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THE FOX AND THE STORK
Once upon a time . . . a fox made friends with a stork and decided to
invite her to lunch. While he was wondering what to serve for the meal, he
thought he'd play a trick on the bird. So he prepared a tasty soup and poured
it into two flat plates.
"Help yourself, Mrs Stork! I'm sure you'll enjoy this! It's frog soup and
chopped parsley. Taste it, you'll find it's dellclous!"
"Thank you very much!" said the stork, sniffing the soup. But she quickly
saw the trick the fox had played on her. For no matter how she tried, she
could not drink the soup from the flat plate. The sniggering fox urged her on:
"Eat up! Do you like it?" But all the stork could do was bluff. With a casual
air she said: "I'm afraid I've such a headache that I've lost my appetite!"
And the fox fussily replied: "What a shame! And it's such good soup too! Too
bad! Maybe next time . . ." To which the stork quickly replied: "Yes, of
course! Next time, you must have lunch with me!"
The very next day, the fox found a polite note pinned to his door: it was
the stork's invitation to lunch. "Now, isn't that nice of her!" said the fox
to himself. "And she hasn't taken my little trick to heart either! A real
lady!"
The stork's house was much plainer than the fox's, and she apologized to
the fox. "My home is much humbler than yours," she said, "but I've cooked a
really special meal. Freshwater shrimps with white wine and juniper berries!"
The fox licked his lips at the idea of these goodies and sniffed deeply when
the stork handed him his jar. But, try as he might, he was unable to eat a
bite, for he could not reach down with his nose into the long neck of the jar.
In the meantime, with her long beak, the stork gobbled her lunch.
"Try it! Try it!" she said. "Do you like it?" But the unlucky fox, confused
and outsmarted, could not think of an excuse for not eating.
And as he tossed and turned hungrily in bed that night, thinking of his
lost lunch, he said to himself with a sigh: "I might have known!"