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The Boastful Snail

Once, a long time ago, God was putting the finishing touches to his last creature, the snail. Its slender body - a help for speeding along quickly to escape from some bigger, hungrier creature - small, muscular & shiny was ready to have life breathed into it. *** The day before the races was approaching. Hare, Cheater & Leopard were the fastest animals - or so everyone thought - so they had been picked to enter the races. Snail, a little creature, was whizzing from hole to cave to tree to burrow, practicing. Four weeks later, Snail was lined up on the starting line with Hare, Cheater & Leopard. He had been entered because kind, old Fox have noticed him speeding past his house. The race-track went around the whole forest in a big circle. "3, 2, 1, GO!!!" shouted Badger, through the megaphone, which Tawny Owl had recently invented. Snail started at a slow pace, but as he reached the half-way line, he suddenly sped up. As he did so, the onlookers stopped jeering, stopped laughing & cheered & clapped but Snail ignored them & concentrated on his destination, the finish line. He overtook Leopard, then Hare & then, when he was just a stone’s throw-away from the finish line, Snail overtook Cheater &he sped over the finish line & felt victorious. But, he controlled himself, & just as the crowds started to come towards him, Snail sped away to calm down & then start practicing for the next race. “…and Leopard comes in last place with Hare in third & Cheater in second place! How do you feel having just been excluded from the races, Leopard?” came Badger’s booming voice. “Terrible.” Gasped Leopard, for he was quite out of breath - as you can probably imagine. *** By the end of the day, Snail had won himself three gold medals & a bronze trophy as well as a good first reputation. For the first few weeks, Snail was just an honest, little snail – but then he started boasting, showing-off & treating all the other animals like scum. *** Once Snail was in bed – dreaming about all the medals he would win in the races the following Wednesday - all the animals decided that something had to be done about his attitude. “I know what!” cried Pigmy owl. “When he starts the first race next week, as he reaches the finish line, someone should fly above him and…” They spent the rest of the night planning every detail for Pigmy Owl’s plan. *** As the day of the races approached, nail started practicing harder than ever. For he wanted to win, win, win, win, win! He was determined to win over & over & over again. *** As Snail was coming up to the finish line, Pigmy Owl swooped low over him & dropped a shell filled with chalk onto Snail’s damp back. The shell weighed a considerable amount & slowed Snail down to a very slow pace. Cheater sped past him & over the finish line, followed by Hare & then Kangaroo & as Snail slowly crept over the finish line, he remembered that no-one had cheered for him & he realized that he had, for the first time in his life, come last. It slowly dawned on his as he trudged slowly home that he was excluded from the races & that he had lost his good reputation. *** Later on that day, Snail reached Pigmy Owl’s tree - which was on the way to his hole in the side of a different tree - & shouted up to him, “Why have you done this to me?!” There was no reply. Snail had not expected there to be one. He tried again. “Why…have…you...done…this…to…me?!” This time, Pigmy Owl did reply. “Because,” he said, fluttering to land on a branch several meters above Snail’s head. Snail bent his head back to see into the owl’s face, “Because we were all so sick & tired of you showing off.” There was a short silence. “So, if you want to keep a good reputation, I advise you not to treat everyone as scum.” With that, he flew away to visit Snowy Owl in the next tree. “Oh.” Sighed Snail & he crept back to his hole. *** The moral is:

Don’t boast & show-off because people & animals won’t like you anymore. It’s as simple as that.