Mariets dug a hole in the clearing to catch birds and camouflaged it.
A squirrel ran across a clearing and fell into a hole. A fox was chasing a squirrel and it also fell into a hole. The squirrel kept running around the pit.
“I have,” says the squirrel, “a hundred ideas.”
“And I only have one,” says the fox.
So they stayed in the pit until the morning.
In the morning the Mari came.
Smelling him, the fox lay down as if dead. And the squirrel kept running around the pit.
- Oh, what happiness! “They even hit two at once,” says the Mari citizen. “But the fox still couldn’t stand it and died.”
The Mari went down into the pit, took the fox and threw it up. Meanwhile, the squirrel, in order not to fall into the hands of the Mari, continued to run. Mariets caught her and killed her.
At this time the fox got up and ran away. The Mari man came out of the pit and looked - but there was no sign of the fox, he had run away. The Mari took the squirrel and went home.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru