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The Dog and the Greedy Tortoise
A Tale from West Africa
There was a famine in the animal kingdom. This famine had lasted so long that any existing source of food had been completely depleted. The animals knew they had to do something real quick or they would all die off one by one. They called a meeting where every animal was in attendance and they determined that they had to do something drastic. It was decided that the mothers would be sacrificed to ensure the continuation of the animal races. They would eat their mothers
The dog was extremely sad because he loved his mother. He thought about this action a great deal and decided he was not going to sacrifice his mother. Instead, he hid her in the sky. Everyday, he would go to a particular spot where he sang a song asking his mother to drop a rope.
His mother would drop a rope and the dog would climb to the sky where his mother would have a feast waiting for him.
One day, as the dog was singing for his mother to drop the rope, the tortoise was passing by and hid himself to observe what was going on. He heard the song dog was singing, then he saw a rope being dropped from the sky and with which the dog climbed to the sky.
The following day, the tortoise went to the same spot and, disguising his voice like the dog’s, he sang the song he had heard the dog sing the day before. A rope dropped from the sky and the tortoise began to climb this rope. At this same time, the dog was just approaching the same spot when he saw the tortoise climbing to the sky. The dog immediately started to sing to his mother. This time, he sang that he was not the one climbing the rope and that his mother should cut the rope. Dog’s mother got a pair of scissors and cut the rope, sending the tortoise crashing to the ground.
This caused tortoise’ shell to break into several pieces. He managed to glue these pieces together, but that was how the tortoise ended up with the rough shell we know today.
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