About the Bat
Once upon a time, long, long ago, a bat lived in the forest, just like the birds. Every morning, as soon as the sun appeared, it would fly out of its nest, sing songs, and search for food.One day, a magpie and a crow quarreled over a grain of some kind. The crow claimed that it had seen the grain first and therefore it should belong to her, while the magpie insisted that she had found the grain and would never give it to the crow.
Neither of them wanted to give in, and they started shouting, then fighting. In the heat of the fight, they didn’t notice how they flew out of the forest and lost the grain.
The bat, sitting nearby on a tree during this quarrel, quietly descended after the fighters flew away, ate the grain, and then, cheerfully singing, began to fly around the forest.
Flying up to the crow’s nest, it saw that the crow was sitting there, very angry. Apparently, she had a hard time in the fight: her beak had turned blue, and her face was swollen.
"Sister," the bat quietly spoke to her, "we are old friends, almost like family. That’s why I want to tell you how the magpie has been scolding you: she called you black, ridiculous, and stupid, and even said you shouldn’t have stolen her grain."
"Oh, that insolent, nasty creature!" the crow exclaimed indignantly. "I won’t be myself if I don’t peck her to death!"
The bat pretended to be angry too, said something bad about the magpie, and flew away. Then, approaching the magpie’s nest, it said:
"Sister magpie, oh sister magpie! We are old friends, almost like family. That’s why I want to tell you how the crow has been scolding you: she called you insolent, nasty, and even threatened to peck you to death."
Hearing this, the magpie was so angry she couldn’t speak. The bat sympathized with her, scolded the crow, and flew away.
From then on, the magpie and the crow became enemies. But both considered the bat their friend and always invited it to visit.
The king of the birds, the phoenix, learned about the quarrel between the magpie and the crow and decided to reconcile them. One early morning, he gathered all the birds in the forest. The bat was there too. The crow and the magpie arrived last. They looked at each other—and both flared up with anger. The phoenix wanted them to first explain the cause of their quarrel, and then the other birds would speak.
The crow told how they had quarreled over the grain and how the magpie had called her black, ridiculous, and stupid.
"I never said that!" the magpie interrupted, unable to hold back. "She’s the one who scolded me, called me insolent and nasty, and threatened to peck me to death!"
"If you hadn’t started scolding me first, I wouldn’t have done it," said the crow.
And they began to argue about who had started the insults first. They turned red from shouting, and their crops swelled.
The phoenix listened to them for a long time and finally decided: each of them should bring a witness to prove their case.
"The bat is the witness!" the crow and the magpie exclaimed in unison.
Everyone looked at the bat, waiting for it to speak. But the bat realized it was caught and didn’t say a word. It lowered its head, turned bright red, and flew away.
Then it became clear to everyone who had caused the enmity between the magpie and the crow. And they realized that they shouldn’t have trusted someone else’s words, and they became friends again.
When all the birds learned that the bat was a liar, no one wanted to be friends with it anymore. And the bat itself felt very ashamed. To avoid meeting the birds, it left the forest and settled under the eaves of a human dwelling. During the day, it hid in its nest and only flew out in the evening when the birds had returned to the forest.
Not straying far from its nest, it fed on small insects. And it stopped singing altogether, afraid that the birds might hear it.
To this day, the bat lives differently from all the birds.
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