2.22.2011

The Little Fish

This morning my best friend Pancho's barking woke me up very early. She smelled a bear outside the hideout and chased it off as soon as i opened the door for her. She came back in but i never could really get back to a sound sleep. Sometimes during this half sleep-half awake state i have very lucid dreams. This one could be based on a story i read once long ago to one of my daughters or maybe not. Either way, the little story keeps jumping out of my imagination, so...

It's a story about three creatures who meet at the edge of a river one day. There's a little fish who can't find his way out to the ocean. He's hanging near the shore, he's beat and wondering what to do. Next thing you know he bumps into the trunk of an elephant who's having a drink at the riverside. Also flitting about is the elephant's best friend a butterfly.

The lost little fish says "the river has been blocked by an irrigation dam" and asks for suggestions from the unlikely pair. Of course the elephant's advice was to bellow as loud as possible then charge, head lowered, full speed into the damn thing to bust it apart.

The butterfly kinda shook its tiny head is amusement realizing that of course the little fish didn't have the personality or the mass the elephant had, and that the elephant's advice was worthless to the little fish. So the butterfly flew down real near the surface and whispered to the little fish [so as not to hurt his friend elephant's feelings]. "Just flap your little wings real hard and let the breeze blow you over the dam".