you do look great but
flattery gets you nowhere
– as the crow flies
The Fox and the Crow is one of Aesop’s fables (here’s an example online that tells the story). Essentially the fox flatters the crow, calling it beautiful and asking if its voice is also lovely. The crow thereby loses the food from its mouth when cawing to show off its voice to the fox, and the fox eats the food. The lesson is supposed to be that you aren’t to fall into the trap of (hollow) flattery.
I was commissioned to do a (large-format) piece of art for a lovely antique shop in town, called le Corbeau et le Renard. But instead of just depicting the crow and fox, we added in a bee that just finished pollinating a flower.
What is the lesson of this “Fox and Crow and Bee” fable? I suppose I can leave it up to your imagination – but something about being easily distracted by bright colours is perhaps part of the story. The crow didn’t pay attention to the fox’s flattery since it saw the bee, and the fox just waits patiently. Eventually I feel the fox will win, methinks. Foxes always win.
(Big thanks to the proprietors of le corbeau et le renard for commissioning this work, and thereby supporting the Creek 53 Conservancy Trust: a project to preserve wild lands in our town, for bees, crows, and foxes!)
© Christopher M Buddle 2024
Nature's Reverie 