The ant, however, focused each day on that single food source that would yeild the most return for her ant nest. She occassionally wished she could go off and play like the grasshopper, which she considered frivolous, but, really, overall, she was pretty satisfied with herself and her life. She was making steady, if slow, progress to the stocking of the ant nest to survive the comming winter. If there was one mar to the ant's perfect existance it was worry for her friend the grasshopper, who never seemed to give a thought for the comming winter. The ant didn't know how the grasshopper would survive without the careful preparation the ant nest made.
{Add: grasshopper *tries* to be an ant - and is miserable! then convinces the ant to try to be a grasshopper - with similar results. So they both decide to be the best at who *they* are...}
Well, you know the story: the winter arrived. The ant was snug in her well stocked nest, and the grasshopper, well, the grasshopper wasn't. But grasshopper died happy after living life to its fullest and saw more of the meadow and the larger world in her one brief season than the ant would, focusing exclusively on work, throughout her many potential years. And one thing is certian: the grasshopper left a WHOLE MESS of eggs behind before winter set in!
The next spring the ant emerged from her cozy ant hill to find the meadow filled with a whole new crop of baby grasshoppers. The next day someone mistook her ant hill for a termites nest and exterminated it with pesticide.
Sicne we all have to go which way would you choose?
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© 1997 Robin A. NíDána
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