As the farmer's wife picked up the knife to kill the heron, the farmer explained what had happened: the snake in his stomach, the heron extracting the snake, and the poison the snake left behind.
"But we can't kill this bird," said the wife. "It did you a kindness!" She let the bird go, but before it flew away, it gouged out one of her eyes.
That is the story of the kindness of the farmer, of the heron, and of the wife.
As the proverb warns: If you see water flowing uphill, that's when someone is repaying a kindness.
Inspired by: "The Nature of the Beast" in African folk tales by Roger Abrahams, 1983.
Notes: You can read the original story online. This is a Hausa story, and it starts here: The Kindness of the Farmer.
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