(with a nod to James Thurber)
Once upon a time there was a wolf who wanted to be King of the Wolves.
"It is a dangerous thing to be King of the Wolves," a wise old wolf told him. "If the other wolves don't like you, they are still wolves, and when they get angry they will eat you."
"I'll be fine," the wolf said. "I'll be so popular, no other wolf will dare dislike me, except for the weak, low-energy wolves, and they'll be afraid to do anything. Anyone threatens to eat me, I'll eat him first, and then all that pressure will be laid off."
So the wolf went around the countryside, campaigning to be King.
"Vote for me, and I'll fix all your problems," the wolf said. "Don't listen to the others. They don't know how to do anything. I alone can fix everything."
The rank and file wolves liked what they heard. "He's one of us," they said. "He gets us."
All these other wolves, though, did not realize that the wolf who wanted to be King owed money to the coyotes. The coyotes had whispered friendly things to the wolf who wanted to be King. The coyotes still wanted to attack and eat as many wolves as they could, but they had compromised the wolf who wanted to be King. So, the wolf went around advocating for better relations with the coyotes.This is exactly what the coyotes wanted.
Then one day, away from town, in a dark corner of the woods, several coyotes attacked and ate some of the wolves. The incident caused a big uproar.
"The coyotes have eaten some wolves!" everyone yelled.
They asked the wolf who wanted to be King what he thought.
"I don't know that it was coyotes," the wolf said.
"But several wolves saw the coyotes eating the other wolves," some responded.
"Can you say for sure that it was coyotes? It could be foxes. It could be cougars. Maybe it was some 400 pound bear sitting in his den."
No one understood why the wolf who wanted to be King would not admit that it was coyotes who had eaten the wolves."
"Coyotes are killers," a reporter said the wolf one day.
"There's a lot of killers," the wolf said. "Lots of killers. You think wolves are so innocent?"
Several months after the wolf had become King, some of the wolves began quietly complaining about him.
"He is in the pocket of the coyotes," some of the wolves whispered.
"And he doesn't know how to fix all the things he promised to fix, either," others whispered.
"I think it's time we eat him," one wolf said.
They began creating a secret plan to eat King Wolf, but the King heard about the secret plan and snuck up on the rebel wolves, and he ate them instead.
"THE KING EATS WOLVES!" a headline screamed out.
The incident created a big controversy, and eventually a Special Wolf Investigator was appointed to decide if the King Wolf had broken any laws by eating the rebel wolves.
After many months of investigating, the Special Wolf Investogator declared that, yes, the King Wolf was guilty. All the other wolves descended on the King Wolf and began eating him. They ate and ate, until the King Wolf was all eaten up.
Moral; You are what you eat....and you will be eaten by what you eat!
Peter Wick
June 15, 2017
