Week 2 Story

 

This story comes from Jatakas tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. It is titled 'The Turtle who couldn't Stop Talking'.

From this bibliography

The Bird and the Snail

One day a snail who lived on a porch decided to get some sun. That same day, a lonely bird was flying and thinking of his loneliness as well as how much he missed his family. The Bird saw the snail and swooped down to acquit himself with the snail. The snail, who was glad to be alive, loved the idea of having a friend. 

One day, the bird said he wanted to move to a nice open forest but couldn't do it alone.

The snail, who knows of his own and the bird's loneliness, offers to join but says "How will I go if I travel a fraction of your speed?"

The bird replies "Oh, you just have to hold onto this stick with your stickiness by concentrating on it like you do with surfaces!"

The turtle replies "Okay, I can concentrate on one thing for sure."

"Now hold onto this and concentrate on nothing else but this stick until we get there" the bird says.

Off they went into the air, fast as ever. The snail thought to itself "wow, I have never gone this fast before. It's pretty cool" when he realized that he already lost his concentration on the stick.

And the snail died thinking "why couldn't I just have focused on one thing?" and the bird went on flying knowing his friend had lost track of what was important, in the current moment, leading to his death. If only he focused on here and now...

Here is a snail who is part of my story

Image Source

Authors Note: 

All the stories are derived from much older stories from India. This is a modern, or new, retelling of these stories in order to bring greater understanding to humans living today. The changes I made in the first story included the type of animals and a moral for the story similar to the original. Humans ignorance and inability to focus leading to their eventual downfall.