Believe a braggart and get yourself into trouble.
Once upon a time there lived a hare in the taiga. He looked like all hares: long ears, two short legs to hold food with, two long legs to run from enemies. Only that hare was a braggart. The hare people have never seen such braggarts before.
One day a little bunny ate a small root of sarana and told his relatives:
“I was running through the forest, looking for food. Suddenly I hit something! I almost broke my head. Look, I tore my lip!
Hares laugh:
- Yes, that's right, your lip is split. All hares have such a lip.
And the bunny says:
- All hares have such a lip, but I have a special one... If you want to listen, don’t interrupt... I hit myself, I see - there is a saran, no one has ever seen anything like it. The stem of the saran is very, very big! The spine of that saran wrap is as thick as a bear! I began to dig the ground. My teeth are sharp. My paws are strong. I dug up two hills of earth on the sides. I dug up the root. I dug up such a root that I ate it for ten days in a row and didn’t even eat half of it. Look how fat I have become!
The hares looked.
“Yes, you’re like everyone else,” they say, “no fatter than the other hares.”
“I hesitated,” says the braggart, “I ran hard, I wanted to show you that root.” Good me! Now I’ve eaten enough for the rest of my life, so I think my brothers will also eat the sweet root.
The hares' mouths began to water. They ask:
- How to find the way to that place?
“Yes, I’ll show you,” says the bunny, “I don’t mind.”
The hares ran after the braggart. We came running to level ground.
The braggart says:
“Here I saw a saran tree the size of a larch.” Here I covered two hills of earth with my paws.
- Where are those hills? - the relatives ask the braggart.
- The river took it away.
-Where is that river?
- It flowed into the sea.
-Where is that saran?
- Withered. I gnawed the root.
-Where is the stalk of saran?
- The badger ate it.
-Where is the badger?
- He went to the taiga.
- Where is the taiga?
- The fire burned it.
-Where are the ashes?
- The wind blew it away.
- Where are the stumps?
- Overgrown with grass.
The hares are sitting, flapping their ears: they cannot make out whether it was as the little hare says. And the braggart has his own:
- Yes, such saran is not difficult to find! It’s quite easy to find such saran. You just need to run forward and look in both directions. Not from one side, but from the other side you will see...
The hares scattered! They fly with their eyes in different directions, so that they see their tail, but don’t know what’s ahead. They opened their eyes, afraid to miss that sweet saran the size of a larch... They ran and ran until they fell off their feet. Then, from hunger, even simple grass seemed sweeter to them than saran. Only they still can’t close their eyes.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru