The Fisherman Grasshopper in a Snowbank Proverb

We’re all familiar with Aesop’s fable of the busy ant that works all summer, putting away stores for the winter, and the happy-go-lucky grasshoppers living for the moment, inhaling 2 packs a day, with nothing in reserve. The latter is my tenant.

I’ve been giving my tenant fish, to warily mix my metaphors, feeding him for the day, employing him with renovations to 2 anthills in the last month (being certain to deduct 2 months of flounder lest I not see it otherwise). But with winter coming, the lake will be freezing over, and my grasshopper will be hard-pressed to find fish to sustain his hand-to-mouth-to-lungs habits.

As an ant, my reserves are only so large, and I simply won’t feed this grasshopper all winter. As much as I’d hate to, I’d have to kick out his unsightly grasshopper ass along with his shack-up grasshopper-ette and baby grasshoppers. He has fair warning that I’m cold-hearted: my car sports Republican bumper stickers. No need to teach him to fish; he knows how. So I’m doing the only thing left, providing the lure, signs advertising his fishing, um, carpentry/handyman skills. (Were any of my fellow bloggers to need grasshopper services on the western side of town, you know how to reach me.)

The moral of the story: give a grasshopper a fish and feed him for a day, lead a grasshopper to water and give him a lure but you can’t make him fish, so hope the ultimate threat of sleeping in a snow bank motivates him.

Just another warm winter reflection brought to you by the Scribbler.