A Terrapin and a Crane were one time travelling together very sociably. They began their conversation by the Terrapin asking:
“How is your family to-day, Miss Crane?”
“Oh, very well. Mamma, who is getting old, complains now and then, that’s all.”
“But do you know that it strikes me that she is very fat?” said Terrapin. “Now a thought has just entered my head, which I beg to propose to you. My mother, too, is ailing, and I am rather tired of hearing her complaints day after day; but she is exceedingly lean and tough, though there is plenty of her. I wonder what you will say to my plan? We are both hungry. So let us go and kill your mother, and eat her; and to-morrow, you will come to me, and we will kill my mother. We thus shall be supplied with meat for some days.”
Replied the Crane, “I like the idea greatly, and agree to it. Let us go about it at once, for hunger is an exacting mistress, and the days of fasting are more frequent than those of fulness.”
The matricides turned upon their tracks, and, arriving at the house of Mrs Crane, the two cruel creatures seized upon Mamma Crane, and put her to death. They then plucked her clean, and placed her body in the stew-pot, and both Terrapin and Crane feasted.
Terrapin then crawled home, leaving Crane to sleep, and the process of digestion. But, alas! Crane soon became very ill. Whether some qualms of conscience disturbed digestion or not, I cannot say, but she passed a troublesome night, and for several days afterwards she did not stir from her house.
Terrapin, on reaching the house of its mamma, which was in the hollow of a tree, cried out:
“Tu-no-no-no!” upon which Mrs Terrapin said, “Oh, that is my child,” and she let down a cord, to which young Terrapin made himself fast, and was assisted to the nest where the parent had already prepared a nice supper for him.
Several days later, Terrapin was proceeding through the woods to the pool where he was accustomed to bathe, when at the water-side he met Miss Crane apparently quite spruce and strong again.