I'm dedicating this to all you hardworking self-sufficient homesteaders out there. I filed this one under "humour", although it may be too true to be funny.

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ORIGINAL VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house, where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of Federal judges that Bill had appointed from a list of single parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

************************************* God Bless America *************************************

-- Chelsea (rmbehr@istar.ca), February 28, 2002

Answers

Really thought this was a great little story. Too true NOT to be scarey !! Guess I better get busy myself around the homestead unless I become like the lazy grasshopper !!! Have a Great Day !!!

-- Helena (windyacs@npacc.net), February 28, 2002.

Chelsea, your original version was much different than the one I remember, which perhaps is what makes the second version so true. I found this to be a sad commentary on what people think is funny these days.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002.

I liked it. Got the exact same e-mail a month ago. Funny in a way but you're right .... too true!

Remember: Get back to work and keep working hard ... there are thousands of welfare recipients counting on you!

-- Mike in PA (smfine@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002.

And so goes life. Thanks for the smile :>)

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), February 28, 2002.

It's sad to think that the "modern" version is way tooooooo true. But, all we can do is work as hard as we can and hope the grasshopper isn't watching too closely.......

-- Harmony (harmonyfarm57@hotmail.com), February 28, 2002.

Coincidence? I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand would string out the story a thousand pages longer, here's her ending:

The ant, struggling through the snow finds a tiny cave benith a pebble. He works to enlarge the cave until it is roomy and snug in this process he finds an abandoned squirrl cache which feeds him comfortably. Another grasshopper (the failed business partner of the first) stages a scene like seen before and the ant looses his new home to be thrust out into the snow. This cycle repeats itself about a thousand times while the ant gives it's final labors knowing that it's privations and work are only going to be claimed by the "Needy" grasshopper.

Eventually the ant discovers another ant who has created a (very vaguely described) free-electricity machine and developed a super- secret hideaway in the Rocky Mountains. They hide out untill all the grasshoppers have destroyed the world (like a plague of locust, Ha) at which time they return to build again. _________________ Actually, I think I am going to show this to my next Economics Class.

-- james in ID (jlfinkbeiner@yahoo.com), March 02, 2002.