A rabbit spent his time making a fool of a coyote and everyone in the forest enjoyed his pranks.
One day, the coyote heard the sounds of someone struggling: “Ooh! Aah! Urrgh!” He looked around and saw the rabbit heaving at a huge boulder all by himself.
“What are you doing?” asked the coyote.
“I’m holding up the sky with this boulder,” said the rabbit. “If I let go, the boulder will move and the sky will fall on all of us.”
“Oh! No one told me the sky was falling,” said the gullible coyote, “Can I help you?”
“Just hold this boulder, while I go and fetch a stick to hold it in place,” replied the prankster.
The coyote held the boulder. The rabbit happily went off. The coyote kept holding it till he was exhausted. He called out for the rabbit, who never turned up. He was busy telling his friends about his trick!
The coyote’s paws slipped. ‘Never mind if the sky falls on me,’ he thought, ‘I simply cannot hold this any longer!’ The boulder stood as usual and the sky didn’t fall. The poor fellow tottered off, knowing he had been fooled by that wretched rabbit.
But the coyote never learnt a lesson. He remained a stupid fellow always. A few days later, in the evening, he heard someone drinking water at the pond in great big slurps.
He crept towards it and saw the rabbit at the pond. He was not lapping the water as usual, but taking in great gulps of it.
“What do you think you are doing, O rabbit? I’ve never seen you drink like this,” remarked the coyote.
“Can’t you see the large cheese in the pond?” asked the rabbit. The coyote looked in and saw the reflection of the moon in it. He was sure it was cheese.
“Wow! How can we get that?” asked the coyote.
‘“If we drink up all the water in the pond, we can get it,” said the rabbit, “But I’m small. You are bigger. Perhaps you can drink faster.”
The coyote as usual fell for the trick! He began to slurp and gulp the water in his effort to reach the ‘cheese’. The rabbit went off whistling to tell everyone of the latest trick he had played on the silly coyote.
He was left slurping water, till he had a terrible stomach ache and could drink no more! He had decided that the cheese was not worth all his effort.
