[cross-posted from dKos–it fell off the front page way fast yesterday with all the London stories.]
One upon a time there were two neighbors, a rich one and a not-so-rich one, a cattleman. The rich man had a huge house with every luxury. The cattleman had a much smaller house, nothing luxurious but tidy and well-suited.
The rich neighbor had many servants who waited on him and his many children hand and foot; they required a great deal of food for their upkeep, but the fields around his house were sparse and overgrazed.
The cattleman’s fields were lush, and on them he kept many cattle and sheep of all descriptions. The cattleman made his living supplying meat to the rich neighbor to feed all the hungry servants, while he himself had none but his own children; for this cattleman used his many children badly, beating them if they made the slightest mistake and saving the best of everything for himself.
A pack of wolves lived hidden in the vast forests around the neighbors’ houses and would come sniffing up to the fence lines looking for breaks. Because the cattleman’s livestock were everything to him, he kept a pack of strong and vigilant dogs who constantly patrolled the borders of his fields watching for the wolves.
The rich man occasionally sent a servant out with a lamp and a stick to walk the property line with instructions to ignore everything but men trying to sneak under the fences, for the rich neighbor was more concerned with thieves than wolves. Even so, he refused to spend any of his considerable fortune on strengthening his fences, saying that he needed the money elsewhere and that a good stout stick in the hands of a good, stout servant was good enough.
And so it came to pass one day that the wolves found a huge hole in the rich man’s fence, caught his youngest son playing in the fields unawares and unattended, and killed him.
The rich neighbor was rightly horrified. The rest of his children all came to him and said, “Father, how did this happen?”
The rich man, not wanting to admit fault before his beloved children, said, “It is the dog pack of our neighbor the cattleman. He is sending them against us. We must go to our neighbor’s house and kill him, for if we don’t, his dogs will surely kill us all.” A young daughter piped up that perhaps a better solution would be to strengthen the fences around the house, but they all cried out that she was dishonoring her little brother’s death, and she fell silent, ashamed.
The rich man took a good deal of gold and bought some of his many children armor and weapons, and the children marched straight into their neighbor’s fields, destroying his fences and killing his dogs as they went. The cattleman’s children hid in terror as the rich man’s angry children stormed the house, though few of them cried when their cruel father was killed and dragged out of the house by his feet.
“Come out, neighbors!” the rich man’s oldest son called. “Your cruel father is finally dead and we have saved us all from the horrible dogs! Now you can live in safety.” The cattleman’s children came out of their hiding places and despaired. Their brave dogs were dead. Their fences were completely useless. Sheep and cattle lay dead in the fields. And worse, the rich man’s children were herding many of the surviving animals over to the rich man’s fields.
“Wait!” cried the cattleman’s oldest son. “Our dogs never attacked you, it was the wolves of the forest! Why are you taking our cattle? Who will help us rebuild our fences?”
The rich man’s oldest son replied, “Now that we are here, we see that your dogs didn’t attack us. But your father was so cruel that we needed to come and kill him so that you could live in peace. As for the cattle, we are taking them to repay us for the death of our brother and the cost of all this armor and these weapons that we have used to save you. As for the fences, you may pay us to rebuild them for you once we leave.”
But it soon became clear that leaving would not be easy. The fences were destroyed, and the dead and unprotected animals in the fields smelled very enticing to the forest wolves. And so the wolves came, first a few, then most of the pack, pouring into the fields to eat the dead and injured cattle. The rich man’s children and the cattleman’s children tried to fight them off, but more and more came. Many of the rich man’s children died. Many more of the cattleman’s children died. The rich man’s oldest son said, “We cannot leave now because you have a wolf problem that threatens us. We must fight the wolves here or we shall end up fighting them at home.”
The cattleman’s oldest son said, “We had no wolf problem before you came here, killed our father, killed our dogs and destroyed our fences. You should have tended your own fences and left us alone.” But to no avail. As the wolf attacks increased, the rich man’s children used bigger and bigger weapons; many of the cattleman’s children and remaining cattle were killed accidentally when the weapons misfired. And more and more of the remaining cattle were herded to the rich man’s land.
Now, some of the dogs had survived the attack, and had licked their wounds in the forest until they were well again. The wolves came to the dogs and said, “See, this is how you are treated by humans. Come, remember who you are at heart–you are wolves. Come with us and we will eat sheep and kill these children who try to stop us, and make these fields our own forever.” And many of the dogs did just that. Those that refused, the pack tore to shreds.
The tales of the lush pickings in the dead cattleman’s fields spread far and wide among the wolves of the forest. Pack after pack came from all over, wolves who would never have ventured so far from home. The rich man’s children started to wonder whether this had been their father’s greatest idea, and some of them went home. The rich man began picking through his children, luring those he didn’t care for as much into combat with promises of many favors, and then finally forcing them when they were reluctant to go. The rich man would always tell his assembled children, “The wolves are weakening, keep them penned in our neighbor’s fields.” And yet, while he gladly gave the armorer bag after bag of gold, still he would not mend his fences. Soon he had spent all he had, and he went borrowing among strangers, giving them the title to the huge mansion he lived in to buy more weapons to kill wolves.
Meanwhile the cattleman’s children tried desperately to protect their remaining cattle and stay alive against the wolves and the weapons of the rich man’s children. They began to bicker among themselves who should take their dead father’s place. The cattleman’s oldest son killed his next-oldest brother, and all the children took sides and fought each other.
The wolves watched and waited, moving closer to both houses. The children of both neighbors fell back, and the wolves controlled more and more of the fields. Finally, there was nothing left of the cattleman’s property but the green house. The wolves talked among themselves, saying, “They cannot escape, we can kill them at our leisure. Now we shall turn to the rich man’s house, for we have eaten all the cattle here.” And the wolves massed along the borders of the rich man’s once-mighty estate, and licked their furry chops as they gazed through the wide gaps in the fences.
You might say, no one could be so stupid as to choose weapons over strong fences. No one would be so foolish as to create a problem where none existed. No one could be so heartless as to send his own children to die, or kill the children of another, however unintentionally, in a pointless fight. You might say, such a stupid, heartless, foolish person could never exist. Reader, I do hope you are right and that such a thing never comes to pass, and that you enjoyed this truly unbelievable fable.