The Boy Who Didn’t Cry “Wolf!”

Mrs. Copeland is a free-lance writer in Char­lotte, North Carolina.

Business and conservative elements in America have continually injured their own cause by shout­ing, “Wolf!” too long and too often… Private en­terprise has conditioned the public to accept rather than reject statism.

SYDNEY J. HARRIS

A shepherd boy was tending his sheep as usual when a grasshopper lit on the end of his flute. He caught it in his hand and called out in a loud voice that was heard way down in the city, “Grasshopper!” All of the important people in town and even some who were not important rushed to the hillside where the boy was intensely ab­sorbed in watching the green bug eat a blade of grass. When they saw it was only a small insect, they were annoyed. “What’s the matter with you, Boy?” the mayor scolded. “Yelling bloody murder over a little grasshopper!”

“But look at his sharp mandibles,” the boy said. “He can really chew up grass.” Nobody looked. They sighed and went back down the hill.

The boy caught several more grasshoppers the next day. He let them go and lay back in the soft grass to play his flute. But his ears were very acute, and he couldn’t play well because of a faint annoy­ing hum that took away the joy of hearing his own music. He turned over on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows, his chin on his hands, frowning. Then, in the distance, he perceived the source of the hum, a loose gray cloud low over the horizon. Sud­denly he was on his feet yelling, “Locusts, locusts!” at the top of his voice.

The townspeople all rushed to the hillside. “Locusts!” the mayor exclaimed indignantly, red-faced and panting from the long uphill run. “I thought you said, ‘Help us.’ Don’t you know we’ve never had locusts in this area? That’s just a thundercloud. Not afraid of a little rain, are you, Boy?”

“But, Sir, I can hear them. It’s a huge swarm of grasshoppers out there.” He pointed with his flute.

The mayor, the members of the city council, and the townspeople all looked at the dark horizon. The mayor wagged his shaggy head and snipped a grasshopper off his sleeve. “There, there,” he said. “I can see this job is getting you down. You’re lonesome. Next week come into my office and we’ll see about getting you a position that will suit your temperament.” He smiled at the shepherd boy and his big hand squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about grasshoppers, Boy. Think of it this way. Grasshoppers can be a bene­fit. They can fatten up the par­tridges which means more meat in the freezers. Always think posi­tively; and don’t call again, unless you see a wolf.”

The boy never saw a wolf, but the next day there came a great cloud of grasshoppers to the land. They neatly clipped the green grass with their sharp little man­dibles till there was none left and the sheep, baaing pitifully, strag­gled away. The boy then came into town, which, like the country, was overrun with locusts. The mayor with a severe case of laryngitis had gone to bed, but the members of the city council carped at the boy. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could have seeded the sky with insecti­cide!”

“I did tell you!” the boy pro­tested. But they turned their backs on him and he felt angry and con­fused. But he was no more miser­able than anyone else. Everyone was hungry and the old joke about the lazy grasshopper wasn’t funny any more.