In the heat of a summer afternoon, a fly was resting on a leaf by a lake and said to himself. “Gosh, if I go down three inches I’ll feel the mist from the water and be refreshed.”
There was a fish in the water thinking: “If that fly comes down three inches, I can leap up and eat him.”
Meanwhile, a bear sitting on the shore thought: “If that fly goes down three inches, that fish will jump for the fly and I’ll be able to grab the fish!”
It also happened that a hunter was further up the bank of the lake preparing to eat a cheese sandwich for lunch.
“Gosh,” he thought, “if that fly goes down three inches and that fish leaps for it, the bear will make a grab for the fish, then I’ll bag myself a bear and have a fish for lunch.”
A mouse by the hunter’s foot was thinking: “If that fly goes down three inches and the fish jumps, and the bear makes a grab for it, the hunter will shoot the bear and then he’ll drop his cheese sandwich.”
A cat lurking in the bushes took in this scene and thought (as was fashionable on this afternoon): “If the fly goes down three inches and the fish jumps and he bear goes for the fish and the hunter shots the bear and drops the sandwich, that mouse will jump on the sandwich and I’ll have a mouse for lunch!”
The poor fly is so hot that he heads down to the cool mist on the water. So the fish jumps and swallows the fly, the bear grabs the fish, the hunter shoots the bear, the mouse grabs the sandwich and the cat jumps for the mouse. But the mouse ducks and the cat falls into the water and drowns.
The moral of the story?
Whenever a fly goes down three inches, some pussy is in serious danger.
It’s a fact
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, egg whites were a popular form of laundry detergent.
In Elizabethan times, carnations were used to spice wine and ale.
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