One day a hungry fox was roaming about the jungle in search of food. He had not eaten for a long time and was starving. He kept wandering from one end of the jungle to the other but still could not find anything to eat. At last he decided, “It seems I shall not find food here. Let me go to the nearby village and try my luck there.” So he ventured out of the forest and started trotting towards the village.

As soon as he reached the village outskirts, some dogs spotted him and started barking. This scared the fox and he started running. Seeing this, the dogs began chasing the fox. The poor fox got so frightened that he ran straight into a washer-man’s house and tripped over a tub of indigo dye kept in the courtyard.

The dogs could no longer find the fox and left. After some time the fox scrambled out of the tub and went back to the forest huffing and puffing.

As he reached the pond by the forest he thought, “Let me stop by and drink some water.” As soon as he lowered his mouth for a drink, he saw his reflection in the water. He had turned completely blue! This gave him a wicked idea and he thought, “This is my chance to lead a comfortable life.”

He called all the animals in the jungle for a meeting. As the animals came by, they were frightened to see such a strange animal. “Do not be scared of me,” assured the blue fox. “I have been sent by the gods to be your leader and guide you.”

All the animals believed him and started treating him like their king from that day onwards. This went on for a long time till one day a group of foxes from another forest came to visit the blue fox. They started howling at the top of their voices, when they met him. The blue fox thought, “How I missed this howling all these days. Let me now howl loudly to my heart’s content.” As the blue fox raised his head and started howling, the other animals in the forest came to see what it was all about. When they saw that the call came from the blue fox, they shouted, “Get that wicked fox and throw him out of the forest. He has fooled us all.” As the animals came running towards the blue fox, he picked up his tail and ran away as far as he could, never to return to that forest again.

Moral: You cannot keep fooling others for long.