The Unsocial Swans

A king named Gay-Chariot owned a well-guarded lake where golden swans lived, each contributing a valuable tail feather twice a year as a kind of unspoken rent for the protection they received.

When a great golden bird arrived seeking to live there too, the resident swans refused him outright, citing their exclusive arrangement with the king -- this was their lake, rented and paid for, and there was no room for an outsider who hadn't contributed anything.

Insulted, the newcomer went straight to the king and reported the swans as rude and inhospitable. The king, without investigating further or hearing the swans' side, angrily ordered his men to kill every bird on the lake at once.

An old swan, spotting the armed men approaching with clubs, understood there was no time to argue or explain -- their only chance was to abandon the lake immediately and flee together as one, which they did just in time to survive.

What the swans lost was not their lives, thanks to quick thinking, but the home and privileged arrangement they had spent so much effort protecting -- undone in a single day by a refusal of basic hospitality to one guest in need.