Return to my nest

               A Fable


          Once upon a time there was a village in the mountains. It was 
 a fairly small village, not too big, but not too small. They never had 
 many visitors, being that they were tucked way up in a small valley 
 where few people travelled. This village had a problem. There was a 
 dragon who lived in a mountain nearby, and every few days the dragon 
 would come out of the mountain caves and crannies and ledges where it 
 lived and would fly down, down, down the mountain into the small valley 
 where the village was, looking for food.

           Now, as dragons go, this one wasn't too bad. It never charged 
 at the village, burnt up any of the houses, or left nasty surprises 
 lying around. All the dragon did was circle around in the sky until it 
 saw a goat, sheep or sometimes a cow, wandering around by itself. Then, 
 in a blink, the dragon would swoop down towards the ground, then go 
 right back up. The goat or sheep or cow would be gone, of course, eaten.

          What the people in the village didn't like, even more than 
 losing the goat or sheep or cow, was the fact that any living animal 
 nearby would go stampeding away from the dragon to hide in the woods. 
 The farmers and herdsmen always had a hard time finding the animals 
 after the dragon had flown back to it's mountain home.

           Now, the dragon didn't mean to scare all the animals, but it 
 had to eat, and the goats and sheep and cows in the open fields were 
 much easier to catch then any deer who might have been hiding in the 
 woods, and besides, there were much more of the farm animals than deer.

           Then one day something happened, and the dragon seemed no 
 trouble at all compared to the new problem, which was an nasty army. 

           The nasty army came marching from the big valleys way down the 
 mountain, into the small valley and stopped just outside the village. 
 The nasty army leaders loudly proclaimed that from then on, they were in 
 charge and that everybody in the village had to do exactly what the 
 leaders of the army wanted, or everybody in the village would be in 
 trouble.

        This made the villagers very unhappy. There were a lot more 
 people in the nasty army than in the village. The villagers did not like 
 the nasty army, but were too scared to do anything to fight back, 
 besides yell.

        About this time, the dragon was having a nap, but was woken up 
 from all the yelling. The dragon went out onto a ledge to see what all 
 the noise was about. The dragon looked down, down, down into the valley, 
 and saw lots and lots more people than usual around the village. The 
 dragon had decided that it was not important, and was just about to go 
 back to bed when  . . . sniff . . . sniff . . . it smelled something, 
 and looked down, down, down again.

           The nasty army, having decided that it was getting late and 
 that they were getting hungry, had set up their camp just outside of the 
 village and had started making dinner. The leaders of the nasty army had 
 brought their favorite food along, and had started to cook it. Roast 
 Piglet.

           The dragon thought it smelled wonderful!  So, the dragon 
 decided to try this new food. (The people in the village didn't raise 
 pigs, so the dragon never had eaten any, never.) 
           
             Well, you can imagine the result. When the leaders of the 
 army saw this huge dragon come swooping down, down, down into the 
 valley, and aim right for their dinner table, they did what any person 
 who is not used to be charged by a dragon would do.

           They screamed in panic, and started running as fast as they 
 could, out of the small valley, and far, far away, with the army running 
 right behind them.

          There never was any more armies after that, and no-one ever 
 bothered the village in the small valley way up in the mountains again. 

         The dragon, after dining on it's first meal of roast piglet, 
 soon decided that it was much tastier than deer or goats or sheep or 
 cows, never ate any of the village's animals again. Instead, it left the 
 small valley every evening to look in the big valleys for pigs to hunt.

          The villagers were very happy, and so was the dragon. As for 
 the army . . . well . . . I don't think they've stopped running yet!

                                                          The End.