Once Upon a Soup

There once was a duck who had grown tired of life on the poor little farm he had always lived on, in a poor little village impoverished by famine and hard luck. So, the duck struck out on his own and went off a-wandering. Now the whole countryside round about had been hit hard by the famine, and most barely had enough to live on. The duck soon learned this, asking at each village he passed on his way, how things fared there. Every time, the animals he met outside each village all told him the same story, that the duck would be welcome, so long as the farmers should eat him first, instead of the other farm animals. That did not suit the duck at all, so he kept wandering along until he came to a great big forest at the foot of a mountain. “Perhaps I shall find some seeds or berries in there,” he said to himself, “for I am so very hungry now that all my provisions are gone.” So into the deep dark forest the duck went. He could hear a few forest creatures calling to each other, but mostly ...

Once upon a time in a little farming village that had fallen upon hard times because of misfortunes with the crops, there was an old farmer and his old wife who lived on turnip soup because all their other crops had failed that year and no one around wanted to trade them anything else for their turnips. They had nothing else to live on except for one egg a week, a cup of milk to go with it, and dingy water from a nearby well that was older than the village. On the farm they had one skinny old goat they got their little bit of milk from, one old hen who gave them their one egg a week, and an old duck. They all lived on turnip tops and old seeds. They didn’t like it much, but all agreed that being fed by the farmer was better than having to fend for themselves. The duck had always boasted to the others that he had the best life, because the farmer fed him every day and all he had to do in return was waltz around the farmyard and let the farmer use his droppings for fertilizer. ...