This was my first original rewrite.

Grashopper and the Ants

One fall as the chilld winds started to blow, a grasshopper, who had somehow managed to survive the change in season, came wandering across a field where some ants were harvesting from the stubble. "Oh please, can you spare me some grain? I'm so famished I fear I'm about to die." The ants looked at the very thing grasshopper, and asked what he had been doing all summer when food was plentiful. "Well, I sang and worked on my music."

--- --- --- "You can sing?" --- "Well, yes. I sing rather well. It's what I do." --- "GOOD. Sing to us while we move this stupid grain. It's such a boring job we're about to go out of our minds."

So the grasshopper sang to the ants the rest of the day while they moved the grain into their storehouses, and at the end of the day, the ants said, "You know, the music seemd to help the work go faster and easier. Come back tomorrow and we will feed you again for your singing."

And so it went until all the grain was harvested, and the ants sheltered the grasshopper when the stormy winter weather finally forced them all underground. The grasshopper kept the ants entertained through the long winter nights, and even taught some of the little ants to sing.

Note: The original Aesop stories had NO MORALS attached, and this one was a simple commentary on the difference between the natures of ants and grasshoppers. I made this up in response to the philistines who quote the original as a put down.

-- Mary Ann, storyteller