Week 9 Story: The Dumb Crocodile

(Brown Hen Bird from MaxPixel)

Author's note: For this story I took the story of the crocodile and the hen and rewrote the ending. I found the ending of the original story to be completely underwhelming, with the crocodile accepting the hen remarking him as her brother simply due to the fact that they both laid eggs. For him to stop his pursuit of her after this moral does not seem true to the nature of a crocodile. So to that end, I gave the story an ending I found more appropriate.

The Dumb Crocodile

One day, there was a crocodile who was sneaking up on a hen. The hen came to feed by the river bank every day, and the crocodile had been watching her. Just as he was about to close his mighty jaws around her, she yelled out, "Oh, brother, don't!"

Taken aback by this, the crocodile stopped, and the hen ran away snickering. The crocodile was furious. "How could she possibly outsmart me!?" he yelled out. "I am a beast far above her, I refuse to be outsmarted by this hen.

The next day, the crocodile was sneaking up on the hen again. As before, he was about to close those same mighty jaws around her, and as before, she yelled out even louder, "Oh, brother, don't!" The crocodile paused for a moment, and the hen had taken off towards her home.

"This is infuriating," the crocodile said. "I will go to Nzambi and ask him how to ignore the hen's cries!"

On his way to see Nzambi, the crocodile met his friend Mbambi, and told him of his woes. "You idiot," Mbambi said, "The only thing we have in common with hens is that we both lay eggs. If she's dumb enough to call you her brother based off of that, she deserves to be eaten. You are even dumber yet for falling for her words."

The crocodile realized what Mbambi said was the truth, and decided to try again. He waited patiently for the hen, more patiently than before. He blended in to his surroundings, burying himself in the riverbank, and waited for then hen to approach. Day in and day out he waited. The hen did not return. The crocodile was about to die of starvation, when suddenly, the hen returned. She began feeding on the river bank as she had done before, and wandered ever so closely to the crocodile. 

"My what great food there is this morning," the hen said, "I wonder what I will find next."

The hen grew closer to the crocodile until she was virtually on top of him. She looked at the back of the crocodile's head and said, "My, what are these shiny objects I see on the ground?" With two swift pecks, she plucked out both of the crocodile's eyes!

In agony and rage the crocodile roared, thrashing about wildly in an attempt to kill the hen, but she far away from him.

"Vile creature, you will never attempt to do harm to my fellow hens or myself again. We are not family, for how could one with such low intelligence as yourself be related to someone like me, who outsmarted you so easily? Now be gone, and never return to this place!" 

The crocodile was shamed, he would never again see, and would have to think twice before approaching prey.

Bibliography

• Richard Dennett, Why The Crocodile Does Not Eat The Hen, from UnTextbook