Floating Salmon

Timmy was delirious on the grass and a poem came to him amidst the sickness and the many hallucinations:

"I was feeling lazy,

restless and distracted.

The day was floating by

right before me like a dead Salmon.

I was the Grizzly going to the rapids

I was hoping for a good sport and a bite of something

and here it was, my dinner, staring at me,

dead in the eye, ready and available.

I thought "why not" and devoured it.

I didn't realise I should have smelled it, questioned it.

I just opened my mouth

and scoffed it down my gullet.

Now I am in pain

The words of my elders echo

through my brain

like a forgotten chore:

Beware of unearned gains."

I advise to STOP READING here. However, if you must, there's more...

What happened was Timmy was hungry and as he was walking by the river he saw a floating dead Salmon. He walked into the water, reached for the fish and went back to the river bank to eat it. He would have noticed that it smelled a bit funny if he bothered to check, but he didn't. It was free, he was lazy and distracted so he didn't question it. Wisdom was not his companion yet. Off course Timmy got sick and puked and dumped his liquid soul out of every pore and it took him quite some time to recover.

Next time he was hungry he decided to walk up to where the Bears usually catch the Salmons and waited for them to start jumping up and out of the water. It took him some time and some sweat, but he managed to catch some before the Bears arrived to start their operations.

He went to the river bank, cooked it nicely, ate it and felt fine and satisfied, ate some berries and cooked some roots the way his father taught him how to, with some nice veggies he found in the forest nearby and felt full, filled and proud of himself.

He also later realised he could plant seeds and have plenty of food if he took care of them seeds and of the soil and allowed time to do its magic. With time he stopped eating fish every day because he had plenty of veggies, fruits and all sorts of delicious plants in the pantry that the soil and the forest gifted him...plus if you check on pubmed.com there is plenty of publications that suggest that animal products are bad for you and plant foods rock (yes Timmy had a wi-fi connection and was a bit of a geek by now).

It took him some trial and error, but Timmy learned that it was better to beware of unearned food (although, free food, yummmm), unearned wisdom, unearned gains of any kind.

He understood that IF, instead of being lazy and selfish and distracted, he made an effort to take care of what takes care of him, good things will always happen.

Kajo