The Crows and the Cobra

Once upon a time, there were two crows who lived in a deep dark forest, close to a big city. They were madly in love and had just gotten married. Every day they would fly around, cawing happily, as they looked for a place to build a twig nest for their new family.

They looked and looked, high and low, for the perfect place. One day they found a beautiful, tall, tree with strong branches on the edge of the forest. They loved it immediately, and they decided to make their nest in its crown.

They started building at once, taking turns flying back and forth to collect good building materials. They wanted to create the absolutely best nest possible. They collected all of the best pencil-width twigs and roots, and little by little, they finally finished its construction.

One day, while Mrs. Crow was carefully sitting on her eggs, her husband flew off to find her some yummy food in the forest. He found her all of the best, juiciest, wriggliest worms and he was in a very good mood. But as he was returning home, he noticed that their tree was hollow and below them lived a very large, very scary cobra.

They both got very scared, of course, because their babies were about to hatch. They knew that the large, scary cobra would love to have their helpless newborns for his lunch! But the crows didn’t know what to do! They couldn’t move the nest or the eggs, and they were very worried.

They had no way of protecting the nest from such a dangerous creature. They thought and thought, and finally Mrs. Crow had a great idea. She had heard stories of a wise old jackal who lived in the forest…