Tortoise and his friend Fox lived near a pond.
One day Leopard showed up: Fox ran, but Tortoise was trapped.
"What a nice snack!" Leopard exclaimed, but he couldn't eat the tortoise because of the shell.
Fox then came back and said politely, "Good sir, just put that shell into the water. It will get soft, and then you can eat the meat inside."
"Thank you, my friend!" said Leopard. "How kind of you!"
But when Leopard put the shell into the water, Tortoise wriggled free and swam away.
Fox also ran away again.
So Leopard ended up with nothing!
Inspired by: "A Friend in Need" in Folktales from India by A. K. Ramanujan, 1991. The storyteller is M. G. Shashibhooshan.
Notes: You can read about the Malayalam language spoken in Kerala and elsewhere in southern India at Wikipedia.
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