What is the moral of "The Fox and the Crow"?

Beware of flattery — those who praise you excessively usually want something from you. The fox never asks for the cheese; he simply praises the crow until vanity makes her drop it, which is what makes the lesson memorable.

Why does the fox mention the crow's voice?

Because it is the one thing that will make her open her beak. The flattery has to be aimed at making the crow do something, not merely at pleasing her, and that is the detail students most often miss when completing this story.

Should the fox speak at the end?

A short closing line works well, since it turns the theft into a lesson rather than merely a loss. Keep it to one or two sentences — a long speech of triumph makes the fox tiresome and slows the ending.

English · Completing Story

The Fox and the Crow

Completing story: a fox flatters a crow until she opens her beak and drops the cheese.

A hungry fox praises a crow's beauty and voice until vanity costs her the cheese.

The story begins: A crow once stole a piece of cheese from a window and flew up into a tree with it. A hungry fox saw her and wanted the cheese for himself.

The Story

One morning a crow found a fine piece of cheese lying on a windowsill. She snatched it up in her beak and flew to the branch of a tall tree to eat it in peace.

A fox who was passing below saw the cheese and at once began to want it. He knew that he could not climb the tree, and that if he threatened the crow she would simply fly away.

So he sat down beneath the branch and looked up with great admiration. "What a beautiful bird!" he said aloud, as though to himself. "What glossy feathers, what a graceful neck. Surely she is the queen of all the birds."

The crow heard him and was pleased, but she said nothing and held the cheese fast in her beak.

The fox went on. "How perfect she would be if only she had a voice to match her beauty. But no doubt one cannot expect everything. It is a pity that so lovely a bird should be dumb."

At this the crow could bear it no longer. She was determined to show the fox that she could sing as well as any bird in the forest. She opened her beak wide and let out a loud harsh caw.

Down fell the cheese, straight into the waiting mouth of the fox.

He caught it neatly and swallowed it in a moment. Then he looked up at the crow with a smile. "My dear lady," he said, "I never doubted that you had a voice. What I doubted was your good sense — and now I doubt it no longer."

The crow sat on her branch, hungry and ashamed, and understood too late that the fox's praise had been nothing but a trap.

Moral: Beware of flatterers; they praise you for what they want.