The Fox, the Duck, and the Lion (A Modern American Fable)
The Fox, the Duck and the Lion is an American fable written by Ambrose Bierce, a 19th-century American writer best known for writing The Devil’s Dictionary. It’s a modern twist on the much older Aesopic fables. I’ll explain at the end.
As is tradition with these sorts of fables, this is a retelling in my own words.
The Fable
A Fox and a Duck were quarrelling over a frog they’d caught, so they decided to take their dispute to the wise Lion. After listening to both of their arguments, the Lion opened his mouth to deliver his judgment.
“I know what your decision will be,” the Duck interrupted.
“You will declare that the Frog belongs to neither of us and that you will eat him yourself. But allow me to say that this is unjust, and I shall prove it.”
The Fox then chimed in, “To me, it is evident that you will award the Frog to the Duck, the Duck to me, and take me yourself. I am well-versed in the ways of the law.”
The Lion, yawning, said, “I was about to explain that during the course of your arguments, the Frog in question has hopped away. Perhaps you both procure another.”
Interpretation
The lion is a recurring character in classic fables. In the most famous of those fables, he goes out hunting with a fox, a wolf, and a jackal. They catch a stag, and they decide to split it into four equal parts, at which point the lion declares, “I will take the first part because I am the king of the beasts. The second part is mine because I am the strongest. The third part is mine because of my great courage, and as for the fourth part, let anyone who dares try to take it from me.”
The lion gets the “lion’s share.”
In other stories, the lion is more vicious still, finding excuses to eat his allies and attendants, as in The Lion and the Monkey’s Breath. Another example is The Wolf, the Fox, and the Ailing Lion.
In the The Fox, the Duck and the Lion, the duck seems to have read the most famous of the lion’s fables. The fox, always clever, appears to know all of them.
But there’s a twist. They got distracted by their arguments and assumptions. The frog gets away. And so the moral, I suppose, is that we shouldn’t fuss, lest we lose what we’re fussing over.
In another fable, Ambrose Bierce has two shepherd dogs fighting over a bone. They go to one of the sheep to settle the dispute. The sheep throws the bone into a river. When the dogs confront the sheep, it explains how it’s a vegetarian.
If you liked this fable, there’s a modern Mexican fable called The Rabbit and the Lion. And if you like these folktales with clever twists in them, I suspect you’d like The Misadventures of Nasreddin. Or, for a classic fable you may not have read yet, I recommend The Donkey and the Onager.
Juan Artola Miranda
I am Juan Artola Miranda, a fabulist living in the Mexican Caribbean. My friends know me by the name of my father's father, but that name grew into something bigger, my writing reaching tens of millions of readers. It was too strong for me to control. Artola Miranda is the name of my mother's mother. It's a better name for a fabulist.