The Fox and the Tiger

Time for story telling. Once upon a time, there was a fox, he was walking through the forest when he ran into a tiger. The tiger naturally wanted to eat the fox, however, the fox, the cunning animal that he is, pleaded to the tiger not to eat him. “Don’t you know who I am?” said the fox to the tiger. The tiger was confused, and he listened to the fox. “I’m someone important in my village.” The tiger refused to believe that and the fox managed to persuade the tiger to go to the village with him to see how important he really is.

As both of them entered the village, the fox walked ahead of the tiger. The village folk stopped what they were doing and watched as the fox and the tiger walked through the village. Truly, the tiger thought, the fox is such and important figure in the village that they all stopped when they were there. Unknown to the tiger, the village folk were scared of the tiger and not the fox. In the end the tiger let the fox go out because of his perceived status of the fox.

Now, this wasn’t exactly a very flattering story about the tiger but it is an old Chinese fable which includes a tiger in the story. There was a statue of the scene from the story at the Siberian Tiger Park where the fox was leading the dumbfounded tiger through the village. There was another statue which has a tiger sitting on his behind much like a human. There didn’t seem to be any story about that tiger though, I wonder what it was.

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