Hang-Ball and Greedy

A powerful wild bull named Hang-Ball roamed the forest freely, and one day a jackal named Greedy and his wife noticed odd loose folds of flesh swinging beneath him as he walked to the river to drink.

The wife jackal was certain these folds would fall off any day, and urged her husband to abandon their comfortable spot — where mice came reliably to drink — and follow the bull instead, so as not to miss the coming feast.

Greedy doubted whether "someday" was worth giving up a sure thing today, but his wife pressed him with proverbs about boldness and effort, and reluctantly he agreed to follow the bull, telling himself the reward was surely close at hand.

Season after season, year after year, the couple trailed the bull, watching those same folds sway and never fall, growing thinner themselves as they lived on scraps instead of their old reliable mouse-trail.

In the fifteenth year, exhausted and no closer to their hoped-for feast, Greedy finally turned to his wife: whether these folds were loose or tight, falling or staying, they had watched them fifteen years for nothing — and it was time to go back to what had once fed them reliably.

The tale is remembered whenever someone chases a distant, uncertain windfall while abandoning something modest but sure — fifteen years is a long time to wait for a maybe.