Once upon a time, there was a salt merchant who traveled to the market every day with his donkey. The donkey carried heavy bags of salt on its back, and they had to cross a river on their way to town.
One day, while crossing the river, the donkey accidentally slipped and fell into the water. The salt bags also fell in. Since salt dissolves in water, the bags became much lighter when they got out of the river. The donkey was very happy to discover this!
From that day on, the clever donkey started falling into the river on purpose every single day. This made the salt merchant very upset because he was losing money when his salt dissolved in the water.
The merchant soon figured out what his donkey was doing. He decided to teach the donkey a lesson it would never forget.
The next day, instead of loading salt bags, the merchant put bags full of cotton on the donkey’s back. The donkey was excited, thinking his trick would work again.
But when the donkey fell into the river this time, something different happened. The cotton soaked up lots of water and became extremely heavy! The poor donkey had to struggle with the heavy, wet bags all the way to the market.
The donkey learned his lesson that day. He realized that his trick had backfired badly. From then on, he never purposely fell into the river again, and both he and the merchant were happy.
The Moral of the Story:
Luck doesn’t always work in our favor. We should use our wisdom carefully and think about the consequences of our actions before trying to be too clever.