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The insects staged a race between the grasshopper and the snail
The snail , urged on by well-meaning friends who assured him that he was, in his own way, every bit as special as the grasshopper, accepted the challenge, at first with a stubborn determination to see it through no matter what the outcome, and then (because his friends' exhortations had begun to cloud his common sense) with a crazy but irrepressible hope that victory might somehow be possible for him.
Despite the seeming pointlessness of the exercise, the grasshopper, since he could see no compelling reason to refuse, accepted with an amused shrug, and was waiting there at the starting line when the snail, accompanied by the cheers of his supporters, moseyed up leaving a long line of slime behind him.
At the sound of the starting shot the grasshopper lurched forward, placing one foot after the other at what for the grasshopper was an excruciatingly slow pace. The course laid out by the animals consisted of one complete circuit of a pond in a clearing in the woods. The grasshopper, who could have completed it in a few seconds, estimated that it would take the slug at least four days at the rate he was traveling.
The grasshopper stood still, thinking what to do next and wondering what he was doing there in the first place. As he watched the snail make his slow way down the grassy path, he was tempted to dash around to the finish line and have done with it. Then, the better to please the crowd, he thought he might run to within a few feet of the finish line, then wait for the snail to catch up with him before shooting across to victory. He liked this idea better, but it seemed a bit cruel to him. And so he walked as slowly as he could up to where the snail had progressed (a distance of some three feet) and sat down to think some more.
In this manner, the grasshopper followed the snail all the way around the pond. The snail never once stopped trudging along, but the grasshopper was compelled to spend most of the time sitting still and thinking. It was the most time he had ever spent thinking about anything in his life. He vacillated from one plan of action to another. His thoughts ranged from the present situation to more universal things. He considered his place in the world and compared it to the snail’s . He compared being big and hard and heavy with being small and soft and fast. He tried to imagine what it must be like to be a sober and cold-blooded creature that lived for many moons, instead of fun-loving and hot-blooded and doomed to die after only a few summers. After four hours of meditating he hadn't decided which was better, or even whether one was better than the other at all.
But by the time the finish line was in sight, the grasshopper who had attained a degree of wisdom seldom attained by his kind. The first result of it was that he had resolved to hang back and let the snail cross the finish line first. After all, he had nothing to prove; everyone knew he could win if he chose to do so. It would make the snail happy, and it would be the wisest thing to do. In this way, both he and the snail would win.
The grasshopper was indeed happy when the snail crossed the finish line first. His supporters were positively ecstatic, clapping him heartily on the back and casting triumphant and, thought the grasshopper, rather snide looks in his direction. A moth who had been particularly vociferous in his support of the snail hopped over and shook a tiny fist in the grasshopper’s face, and said, "I guess he taught YOU a lesson, grasshopper!"
For a long time after that, the grasshopper found himself an outcast among the insects. He was "the grasshopper who'd been beaten by a snail," an object of scorn and pity. (The snail on the other hand, was much in demand as an inspirational speaker.)
The grasshopper was a bit stung by all of this at first, but he soon found his circumstances rather enviable. No one ever challenged him to races anymore, nothing exceptional was expected of him, and so he was free to spend his days basking in the sun and eating sweet clover. The snail in his own way had taught Grasshopper a very
valuable lesson. Once or twice he caught the snail standing and staring at him, but he couldn't tell whether the expression on the snail's face was one of contempt or one of envy. Whatever it was, it wasn't very pretty.
Then one day the moth came flying over to the grasshopper and said breathlessly, "Have you heard? The lightening bug challenged the snail to cross The Road tomorrow, and the snail accepted!"
The grasshopper was aghast. "But he'll be killed!" he exclaimed. "What on earth made him think he could do it?"
"Because he beat you in the race," replied the moth. "He knows you can cross The Road without getting hurt, and since he's faster than you he figures he'll have no problem at all."
"But I only went across The Road and back one time, and that was when I was young and stupid," protested the grasshopper. "My great grandfather on my mother's side was killed trying to cross The Road!" But the moth had already flown off to tell others the news. "I let him win! How stupid can one snail be?" the grasshopper shouted, to no one in particular.
All day long the grasshopper pondered what to do. Finally, he ran off to try and reason with the snail. The snail wouldn't believe that he'd let him win the race. Slow of mind, and slow of body. He actually thought he'd won it fair and square. The grasshopper even offered to run another race with him to prove what he was saying, but the snail only said, "You can have your rematch after I cross The Road tomorrow."
In desperation the grasshopper said, "All right, tell you what I'll do. I'll race you across The Road tomorrow. Is that fair?"
The snail shrugged. "Sure, if you don't mind being beaten in public again. I don't care. Just don't get in my way, okay?"
News of the rematch spread quickly, and the next morning at the appointed time a huge crowd of insects was gathered by the side of The Road. The snail’s supporters were all there to cheer their hero on. He stood shifting impatiently from foot to foot waiting for the starting gun to sound. In the meantime, the grasshopper looked nervously down The Road in each direction as cars came speeding by one quickly after another.
At the COO sound of the mourning dove, the snail crept forward. Three cars had whizzed by before he even had both front feet on the asphalt. He turned and looked back at the grasshopper(who was standing still only because he was waiting for a break in the traffic) and said, "Can't keep up, eh, grasshopper?"
In the time it took the snail to pronounce this sentence, the grasshopper saw his opening, and shot across The Road at absolutely top speed. It was awesome. The other insects let out a gasp in unison, partly over the grasshopper’s speed and partly because, despite his speed, he had just barely slipped by in front of a huge truck. The wind from the truck blew up a cloud of dust and knocked a few of the smaller insects off their feet.
When the dust had settled, there was the grasshopper standing on the opposite side of The Road. The snail gaped at him in astonishment, hesitated, and then lowered his head in shame and backed away from The Road. Seeing this, the grasshopper breathed a sigh of relief. With a wave across The Road at all his former friends, he turned and vanished into the woods.
The grasshopper never came back across The Road. (As he would have been the first to admit, he was afraid to risk it again.) Only once in a great while a butterfly would fly back from the other side with stories about a wise old grasshopper who lived alone on a great hill and taught humility and self-control to all the insects there.
The snail withdrew into himself, figuratively and literally, he stayed in his shell. He became sullen and taciturn and wouldn't talk to anyone anymore. A few mornings later, his body was found floating
In a bowl of beer, he knew to keep away, and yet there he was bloated and floating in a vat of beer….The grasshopper quicker in flight and wit had won the race..yet it made him very sad. His sadness was seen as wisdom. Grasshopper decided to share his wisdom with all the slower insects of the garden, and became a great teacher.
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