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73 the guinea fowl and the farmer A GUINEA FOWL LIVED in a wasteland near the melon patch of a fanner. At night when the fanner and his wife were asleep, the guinea fowl would fly to the patch and pick out the melon he wanted to eat; then he would peck a hole big enough for his neck, insert his clown-like head, and eat the meat inside. The farmer's wife, noticing each morning that a melon had been destroyed, urged her husband to set a trap for the thief, but he only smiled and said, "What he takes will never be missed. Let him have his melon now and then." [ 142 ] When the guinea fowl saw he was not molested, he grew more and more arrogant. "What kind of man is this?" he asked himself. "He hasn't even got courage enough to defend his own property." In his insolence he began destroying the young melons before they ripened on the vines and pecking holes in the ripe ones that he did not want for himself. "The farmer won't do anything about it," he said. "The farmer is afraid of me." The farmer, aroused by the senseless destruction of his crop, loaded his gun and lay that night behind a blind he had made, and when the guinea fowl flew up from the wasteland, he fired both barrels, and the fowl fell dead before him. "Your fate," he said to the dead bird, "is the fate of those who mistake tolerance for weakness." [ 143 ] ...

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