The Boy Hunting Locusts

One clear afternoon, the grass beside the field stood high and thick, and locusts sprang here and there among the blades. A boy carried a small basket and bent low as he searched. Whenever he caught a locust, he dropped it carefully into the basket. With each catch he grew more pleased, thinking his eyes and hands were wonderfully quick.

Some locusts were green as new leaves, and some were brown as dry earth. They leaped suddenly and vanished in the shadows of the grass. The boy ran after them until his shoes were dusty and the backs of his hands were scratched by the sharp blades. Seeing his basket grow fuller, he became eager to add one more prize.

Then something moved beside a tuft of grass. The boy saw only a curved shape and thought it must be a large locust. He did not pause to wonder why it did not leap. He did not look closely at its body. Delighted, he stretched out his hand to seize it.

Just before his fingers touched it, the creature turned and lifted a stinging tail. It was not a locust, but a scorpion. “If you had touched me,” said the scorpion, “you would have lost not only me, but all your locusts too, for pain would have made you drop your basket.”

The boy sprang back, his heart beating hard. He held his basket firmly and looked again at the grass with slower eyes. He carried home many locusts that day, but he also carried home a wiser habit: before the hand reaches, the eye and the mind should examine what lies before them.