One day the cricket grew tired of singing solos, so he asked his ant cousins if they would like to sing backup. “Certainly not,” said the ants, “Summer is almost over and it’s time you started thinking about your future, young man.”
“But summer is the perfect time to practice, food is literally growing everywhere!” , the cricket chirped.
“You’ll see,” said the ants and slammed the door to their nest.
The cricket spent the rest of the summer working on Brahms songs, until the weather grew chilly, and there wasn’t nearly as much to eat as before, in fact virtually nothing.
Starving, the cricket hopped over to see his ant cousins, hoping to sing for his supper.
“No way!” said the ants from behind their closed door. “You had your chance and you wasted it.”
The cricket grew very sad thinking about his impending death, but then he realized he finally understood the true meaning of Brahms Requiem.
He began to sing it, thinking he might move his cousins to open the door.
“For
all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of
man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away”
Meanwhile, a passing farm girl heard the cricket’s plaintive song and
was moved to tears. She picked up the frail creature, put him in a warm box
with plenty of food and carried him into the farmhouse. When her father asked her what she was doing, she said, “Oh, father, this poor creature has such a lovely voice. I plan to keep him all winter by my bed to cheer me up.”
As she opened the door to her cozy bedroom, she turned to her father and said, “And by the way, the ants are in the corncrib again.”
The angry father grabbed a can of insecticide, charged into the barn and annihilated the entire ant colony.
Moral : It’s better to sing for your supper, than to steal
corn from a Kansas wheat farmer.
