Vedantic Tales: The Discipleship of
Sri Nag , The Cobra

'For instance?' Sri Nag asked, now somewhat annoyed.

Akhu sat back on his haunches, stroked his whiskers, and again cleared his throat. All this was an indication to his colleagues that he was about to launch into one of his professorial discourses, such as he often harangued them with. They, too, sat back.

'You see, my good sir,' Akhu began, 'as I said, it was never the best of us that you once caught; begging your pardon, it was only the least desirable. Without you, the percentage of our unfit population has grown more than tenfold and is increasing exponentially. We are rapidly becoming a society of delinquents. If one can call it a society at all. Our teenagers are running wild. At one time we were able to control them by threatening to feed them to the dread Sri Nag; but now they know that is merely an empty threat. They laugh at us; they no longer have respect for their elders and betters. Moreover, the unfit are reproducing the fastest; there is not enough wild grain to support our community. The younger generation are into the cultivated fields and even into the farmers' storage bins. The farmers are, of course, poisoning them. But that seems to be an ineffectual deter rant; our population continues to explode. The situation is known in the village as an Infestation of Mice, an outrageous term! Furthermore, poison does not discriminate; our best are killed along with our worst. The process of natural selection, known sometimes, if I may say so myself, as the survival of the fittest is no longer operative. And the frogs! Stupid creatures! The frogs are proliferating beyond all bounds; they are gobbling up the fish eggs and the insects, both beneficial and otherwise. There are almost no more fish in the pond, and insects, as you of course know, are necessary to the ecological well being of the field. Ecology means...'

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