Fable 6: The Farmer, the Fox, and the Pheasants

There was once a farmer. Diligently, he tilled his soil, planted seed, and raised his crops. He made a modest living and used it to build himself a stone house within which he could observe his farm. He lived happily apart from one nagging issue, a very greedy fox.

The farmer kept a handsome number of chickens next to his house. Noisy as the cockerels could be, he had placed them there to hear any ruckus that might have occurred from late night fox attacks; a system that worked very well. Many times, he had stormed out into the moonlight at the sound of frantic clucking to see a beady set of eyes staring back from inside the coop. One shot towards the sky with the farmers gun was enough to scare those eyes away.

The next morning, he would count his chickens and no doubt see some missing. An unfortunate occurrence, but natural. The problem came when one fox would take the lives of more than just some chickens. This fox would leave many chickens dead, eating only one or two before departing and, what's worse, the farmer was he could not seem to catch the pesky thing in the act!

Down in his fields, the farmer was having another problem. Pheasants had been raiding his newly sprouted seed from the ground. Seeing the barren spots in his harvest saddened him. The farmer cursed the pheasants into the air.

Unbeknownst to him, the greedy fox had his ears trained on the farmer, hearing his plight.

One day, the fox approached the farmer directly. He was leaning on his hoe, examining the fields he oversaw.

“Ho, farmer!” the fox shouted, from what he believed to be a safe distance.

The farmer jumped, turning around quickly to see nothing other than what he considered to be his nemesis. Swiftly, he brandished the hoe at the fox, shooing him away.

“Now now, there’s no need to be so uncivil!” The fox shouted in faux surprise. “I am here to make you an offer!”

The farmer seemed to wrestle in his own mind for a few moments before lowering his ‘weapon’. The fox took that as an invitation and padded over to him.

“I don’t hunt anything on these lands other than those chickens…”

At the mention of his flock, the farmer bristled, and the fox took a notable step backward.

“…because if I hunt out in the open, you will likely see me and…”

The fox fixed his eyes on the farmer's gun.

“…dispatch me.”

The farmer stared at the fox, gesturing for him to continue.

“If I could hunt out in the open, I wouldn’t need to feast on your fowl. I could eat the pheasants instead,” the fox finished.

A tempting deal indeed, the farmer thought well of it. However, he wasn’t sure if he trusted the fox and took some minutes to examine every aspect of the deal. It seemed too good to be true. The pheasant and the chicken problem solved in one! No more would the farmer have to look at his patchy crops in dismay, nor wait hours at night to catch a glimpse of the fox in his hen houses.

The farmer nodded his agreement.

“Excellent!” the fox smiled wide, flashing his teeth dangerously before padding away into the undergrowth.

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The farmer had been wary of his decision for a few short days, wondering if it was right to make a deal with such a sneaky creature. His worries were soon calmed when he saw the fox in his crop field, a pheasant hanging from his chops. The fox looked up at him and winked.

And so, their agreement continued well into the next year. The farmer enjoyed a full field of crops for the first time and the fox enjoyed a full belly.

That was until, one day, the farmer caught the sound of shouting on the air. Fearing the worst, he reached for his gun and ran to the field.

“… Come now, aren’t you tired of this? Move aside!” The farmer recognized this voice as that of the fox.

“Never!” A female voice responded passionately.

Skidding to a halt, the farmer saw the fox, snarling at a female pheasant. She was guarding her chicks, they lay preciously in the cradle of undergrowth behind her. They both turned to face the farmer as he arrived.

“He wants my chicks!” the pheasant appealed to him.

“A fox has to eat! I have permission from my kind friend here to hunt pheasants on his land!” the fox directed his retort at the bird.

“He doesn’t want them to survive, or he would have eaten me! He wants them because they taste…better,” the pheasant bristled in disgust at the thought.

The farmer looked at the fox, who would not meet his eye.

At that moment, the farmer knew he had been wrong to trust the fox. Just as he had been with the chickens, he was taking too much – greedy. The farmer didn’t like the pheasants on his land but could understand an animal's need to secure the next generation. If that cost him some seed then so be it.

The farmer growled, swinging his gun up from his hip and aiming it at the fox, who scrambled away in a flash of orange.

Soon enough, the farm was back to the old normal. The chickens were attacked and his crops were patchy. Despite this, the farmer was happy. Happy to have the pheasants as his new companions. He sacrificed some of his lands to the forest, which soon filled the space with scrubland – a perfect place for the pheasants to forage and live, just as his farm was to him.

Moral: Consider the smallest victims of your decisions.