Once upon a time, the animals had their own market. On Market Days, the Lion, Dog, Deer, Hyena, Fox, Elephant, Leopard, Squirrel, Rat (with long mouth) and other animals brought their farm produce to the market for sale. Elephant was the Market Leader while Lion was the Deputy. All the animals knew the vices of each other. Rat was known to love fighting, while gossiping and poke-nosing was the Tortoise’s vice.
One day, a fight broke out between the Squirrel and the Rat. The Rat loved fighting hence the other animals did not intervene when the fight began. Tortoise left his stall, ran as fast as he could to watch the fight. On getting there, he thought the Rat was prevailing on the Squirrel, so in sympathy for the Squirrel, he jumped in their midst. The Rat disdained the Tortoise for not minding his business, hence, he was angry, he then left the Squirrel to face the Tortoise. In anger he then bite Tortoise’ nose. Tortoise began to cry out with a song on the situation he found himself to attract the other animals to save him from the Rat.
The other animals refused to safe the Tortoise from the Rat. Instead of separating the fight according to his song, they made mockery, believing he deserved the consequence of his poke-nosing. When the Tortoise realized that they were not ready to save him, he relied on his innate wisdom to bail himself out. He then made effort to pull his nose together with the Squirrel’s mouth into his shell, thereafter closing his shell on the Squirrel’s mouth. The Squirrel now began a serious struggle to free his mouth. As he was struggling, so was his mouth getting longer till it was free. The fight resulted in the Rat’s mouth becoming longer and the Tortoise nose becoming smaller till this day.
Lesson from this folklore showed that there is no good reward from incessant quarrel or in gossiping, because the consequence of both vices never portend a good end.
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