While a deer was eating wild fruit, he heard an owl call, "Haak,
haak,"[6] and a cricket cry, "Wat,"[7] and, frightened, he fled.
In his flight he ran through the trees up into the mountains and into
streams. In one of the streams the deer stepped upon a small fish and
crushed it almost to death.
Then the fish complained to the court, and the deer, owl, cricket and
fish had a lawsuit. In the trial came out this evidence:
As the deer fled, he ran into some dry grass, and the seed fell into the
eye of a wild chicken, and the pain of the seed in the eye of the
chicken caused it to fly up against a nest of red ants. Alarmed, the red
ants flew out to do battle, and in their haste, bit a mon-goose. The
mon-goose ran into a vine of wild fruit and shook several pieces of it
on the head of a hermit, who sat thinking under a tree.
"Why didst thou, O fruit, fall on my head," cried the hermit.
The fruit answered: "We did not wish to fall; a mon-goose ran against
our vine and threw us down."