Mini-parable

There once lived a solitary toad in a small swamp that smelled of mint and wet moss. She was an unremarkable creature, mottled brown and green, but she became famous for her loud and expressive croaking. Animals from all over the forest gathered at the water’s edge to listen, trampling the soft mud into hard-packed earth. At first, the sounds were taken for an unusual kind of singing. Over time, however, many began to discover profound meaning in them. Lovers heard confessions of love, businessmen detected the sound of money, and politicians found hints of power and secret deals.

Soon there were those who, for money, claimed to interpret every shade and nuance of the amphibian’s voice. Matters went so far that some enterprising animals made a handsome profit selling the best places by the swamp and trading recordings of the “sage toad” and the “prophet toad.” Journals and books appeared offering interpretations of her wise croaking “utterances,” and a new form of divination emerged, based on the volume and duration of the toad’s cries.

Then one day, to everyone’s great dismay, the toad suddenly died. She died in full view of the crowd that had gathered to listen to her supposedly profound croaking. Yet even after her death, interest in the recordings did not fade. This prompted a group of forest animals – scholars and devotees who genuinely believed they were preserving her wisdom for future generations – to invent a croakometer, a device designed to decipher the toad’s croaking.

The admirers of the famous toad were astonished when they finally learned what she had been shouting all along:

“Leave me alone.” “I can’t breathe with so many of you here.” “You are destroying the swamp where I live.” “Go away, or the swamp will dry up.” “I will die soon because of this mess.”

Within a year, the swamp had become a dusty depression in the forest floor. The mint was gone. But the recordings sold better than ever.

First published on my Substack: https://alisherfaizullaev.substack.com/p/what-was-the-toad-croaking-about

#parable #miniparable #shortfiction #philosophicalfiction #satire #interpretation #meaning #environment