1 Picture, 1 Story Week #38

SALTY VENGEANCE

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There was once a scarcity of salt in the land of the animals. The demand for salt outstripped the supply and prices skyrocketed. The animals were willing to pay whatever it took to get some salt but the main problem was that it was not available anywhere.

One day the animals summoned a meeting to pool their ideas and resources to find a solution to their nagging problem. In the meeting, they arrived at the conclusion that one of them had to be dispatched to a far away village to purchase some salt. Udo, the tortoise, was the obvious choice. Not only was he very intelligent but he was also well travelled.

It took Udo three days and three nights to get to the salt market. There he bought a bag of salt. Since the bag was far too heavy for him to carry on his head, he tied the bag with a rope and dragged it along behind him.
Everything went well until he reached the village of the lizard. Then something went dreadfully wrong. The bag of salt got lost. Someone he knew not had cut the rope that he was using to pull the bag of salt along. Udo retraced his steps to find out what had happened. Suddenly, he saw a lizard holding his bag of salt.
"What are you doing with my bag of salt?" he demanded.
"How can you prove that this salt belongs to you?" the lizard asked. "After all, you were not carrying it on your head." he added.
"I bought the salt from the salt market," protested Udo.
"I came out from my house and saw a bag of salt rolling on the ground. I took it," reasoned the lizard.
Neighbours were called to mediate the conflict. They were all lizard's kinsmen. After listening to both claims, they ruled that the salt belonged to the lizard. Udo summed up his feelings in a proverb: "What one man does to another is like 'hold this for me.' Vengeance is mine." Poor Udo had to go home empty-handed.

Not long afterwards, the lizard was travelling through Udo's village. It began to rain and the lizard had no umbrella to protect himself from the rain. He sought shelter from the rain. He ran into one of the holes in an anthill. But the hole was not deep enough for him to take cover. His head and body went in but his tail stuck out.
Just at that very moment, Udo happened to be passing by. He saw a tail sticking out of a hole. He quickly cut it off. In a flash, the lizard came out. He shouted, "What have you done? You have cut off my tail."
"Is that right?" Udo replied. "I saw a tail sticking out of a hole and I picked it up for my meal."
Neighbours came out to listen to the two claims. The lizard stated his case first, how he went into a hole to avoid being drenched by the rain. He said he later found his tail cut off by Udo who refused to give it back to him. Udo reported that he found a tail which belonged to nobody sticking out of an anthill hole. He picked it up for his soup.

The neighbours reached a consensus that the tail belonged to the person who found it. Ever since that time, the two villages have been at war with each other.

THE END

There is no peace without justice

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