Thursday, June 10, 2010

LIZ CLANCY: The Hare and the Leopard

According to a tale from the Banyankole tribe from Ankole in southwestern Uganda, the hare told his then best friend the leopard that he was going out to do some farm work, which always made him really tired. However, when he got to his garden, all he did was rub dirt on his legs so that when he returned home after a long day's idling, he would look like he'd been knee-deep in muck all day. In order to 'prove' his farm was a successful one, the hare also pinched some beans from the leopard's crop, claiming them as the product of his own hard work.


The leopard did eventually realise that someone had been nicking his crops and little suspecting his buddy of the felony, set a trap. The hare was caught and you would think that that was the end of their friendship but the hare wasn't about to let that happen. He called to a passing fox to let him out. This fox obviously wasn't as famously cunning as others, for he did, and he also allowed himself to be conned by the hare into trapping himself as well so that when the leopard came back, he thought the fox was his bean-thief, and promptly savaged him to death (personally, I think the leopard didn't think this one out: foxes don't eat beans, do they?! Having said that, neither do leopards, but I assume this one was a commercial farmer and sold his produce to the Banyankole version of Tesco, rather than consuming the crop himself).


Whether or not the leopard ever found out the truth is not known, although given that most leopards would snaffle a tasty hare if it wandered onto their bean-patch today, I'm guessing he did, and told all his relatives as well.

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