Cunning little vixen... This is Flo, a vixen (female fox) at the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey.
A VIXEN* who was clambering over a fence found herself slipping, so to avoid a fall she reached out and grabbed at a nearby bush. But the bush was a bramble, and it cut her paws and made them bleed.
So the vixen cried out, ‘I turned to you for help, and you’ve made everything worse!’ But the bramble snapped back, ‘Well really, what did you expect? You grab onto me, who habitually grabs onto everything.’
This myth goes to show something true of people too, that it is useless to run for help to those who are by nature unkind.
A vixen is a female fox. The Greek text of the fable uses the feminine throughout.
Précis
A vixen who was clambering over a fence lost her footing and snatched at a bush to steady herself. When thorns tore her paws, she was resentful, but the bush replied unfeelingly that the vixen could not have expected anything else from a bramble. The story warns us that the hard-hearted are unlikely to change for our convenience. (58 / 60 words)
