“TALK-TALK”
… SHALL BE YOUR PUNISHMENT
Copyright © 2021 Anike Foundation
Once upon a time, Tortoise owned a pineapple farm by the roadside. The pineapple farm was located beyond a stream and contained orange, mango, pineapple and other fruit trees.
Sometimes, the fruit on the trees would ripen and fall. Whenever the pineapples in Tortoise’s farm would ripen, Squirrel and her children would go to the farm to eat every ripe pineapple they could find.
The issue was not that they ate the pineapple, but they would go around the large farm and would take a bite out of every ripe pineapple.
As a result, the pineapples became unsellable and unacceptable as gifts. Once any part of a ripe pineapple was eaten, the pineapple would emit a smell that allowed other animals to find it easily.
Tortoise noticed this and monitored those responsible. He found that Squirrel and her children were to blame. Tortoise warned them to stop eating his pineapple and even enlisted the help of their neighbors in the matter, but Squirrel did not heed his advice. As the problem got worse, Tortoise became angry and was prepared to fight her in order to keep her away from his farm.
However, whenever Tortoise saw Squirrel on his farm, she was always on top of a palm tree, or some other tree that was impossible for Tortoise to climb. There was no way that Tortoise could engage Squirrel in a fight.
Regardless, Tortoise knew that he had to stop Squirrel from eating his pineapples. He concluded that he would ask the local priest to curse anyone eating his pineapple. When Squirrel heard the news, she pleaded with Tortoise. Because of the other people who joined her plea, Tortoise forgave Squirrel.
However, he would not spare her from the ‘talk-talk’, meaning that whenever Squirrel and her children passed through the stream, Tortoise would gather his friends and tell them what Squirrel and her children did to him. Squirrel was not happy about this. One day, she reminded Tortoise he had forgiven her. Tortoise would always tell her that, while she was forgiven, she would continue to be the subject of gossip, and that she shouldn’t be annoyed when she heard him gossiping, or doing the ‘talk-talk.’
Each time squirrel and her children were passing by Tortoise’s pineapple farm, they would be tempted to eat the ripe pineapple in the farm. Sometimes, the pineapple would ripen and fall towards the road so that it caught the attention of passersby. Although squirrel and her children passed through that road all the time, they stopped stealing Tortoise’s pineapple, not because they did not want to eat pineapple anymore but because they were afraid of ‘talk-talk,’ which Tortoise used as a deterrent against their wrongdoing.