An Aesop’s Fable
Audio: The Crab and its Mother
A mother crab, sitting next to her friend the frog, was watching her baby crab walking along the sand.
“Oh, how awkwardly my son walks. His sideways walk is so graceless and unbecoming.”
The mother crab called her baby crab over to her. “Son, please, you’re embarrassing me, don’t walk like that, it’s so much more refined to walk straight forward.”
The little crab tried his best to follow his mother’s instructions, but he could not seem to get his legs to walk straight ahead.
After a frustrating day of trying, he went back to his mother.
“Mother, I have tried to start walking straight ahead, but I just can’t seem to do it. Could you please show me how it’s done?”
The mother crab crawled out of her hole and put one foot in front of the other, but no matter how hard she tried, the only direction that she could go was sideways.
She sighed and scuttled over to her baby crab. “Maybe sideways isn’t so bad…” and off they scurried, as sideways as sideways could be.
u copied the african folktale known as “teaching baby crab to walk”
Comment by EMT — February 3, 2010 @ 5:18 am
This is actually adapted and retold from an Aesop’s Fable. But I am not surprised that there is an African version of this story. I do love the way you can find versions of the same story in many different countries.
Cheers,
Sheila
Comment by Sheila — February 3, 2010 @ 2:22 pm
Actually,the other aesop version of this story is that the mother always finds fault in what the baby crab does.
She finds that is walks with an awkwarg gait and then tell’s him.The baby crab replies saying please show me how to walk.
The mother crab never critisises the baby crab again.
Comment by aditi — February 9, 2012 @ 11:41 pm
Thanks for this. It’s always interesting to discover other variants of a story.
Comment by Sheila — February 10, 2012 @ 12:21 pm