The Thirsty Crow and the Tall Jug

The summer sun had drunk up all the puddles, and the crow had been flying all morning, looking for water.

Her throat was dry as toast. Her wings were tired as bedtime.

Then — down in a farmyard — she saw it. A tall clay jug, standing in the sun. She landed on the rim, looked in, and her heart went up like a kite: WATER!

Then her heart came down again. The water sat way, way down at the bottom of the jug. She stretched her beak in — down, down — and reached nothing but air. The water shimmered below, close enough to see, too far to sip.

Plan one: push the jug over! The crow set her shoulder against it and shoved with all her might. The jug was heavy as a sleeping buffalo. It did not even wobble.

That plan failed.

Plan two: break it! She tapped the clay with her strong beak — tap, TAP, TAP! The jug said tonk, tonk, tonk and stayed exactly jug-shaped. Her beak hurt.

That plan failed too.

Plan three: reach harder! She hung over the rim so far that her feet nearly left it, stretching, stretching — and got a beakful of nothing, again, and nearly a headful of jug.

Three plans. Three fails. The crow sat on the rim, hot and cross, and thought about giving up and flying on.

But flying on was also a plan that could fail — the next water might be even further. So instead, she did the cleverest thing a tired bird can do. She sat still, and she looked around, and she thought.

And she noticed the pebbles.

Little round pebbles, lying all over the farmyard. And somewhere in her clever crow head, the three failed plans had taught her things: the jug won’t move, the jug won’t break, my beak won’t stretch. So the water must come up to me.

She picked up a pebble and dropped it in. Plip.

The water rose… a tiny, tiny bit. So small you’d hardly see it.

Another pebble. Plip. A tiny bit more.

Now — this is the part of the story the hurrying birds never understand. One pebble did almost nothing. It would take so many pebbles. But the crow had stopped asking “will one pebble fix it?” and started asking “is the water higher than before?” And it was. Every single time, it was.

Plip. Plip. Plip. Pebble after pebble after pebble, back and forth across the hot farmyard, while the water crept up the inside of the jug — past the halfway mark — up and up — until at last, at LAST, it stood shining at the brim.

The crow drank. Long, cool, wonderful sips. The best water any bird ever earned.

And when she finally flew off into the evening, the farm sparrows crowded round the jug to marvel.

“So clever!” they chirped. “The famous pebble trick!”

But that isn’t quite right, is it? You know the fuller story now. The pebble trick was plan number four.

The real trick was still being there to think of it.