The Ant and the Grasshopper

In a beautiful meadow, there lived an ant and a grasshopper. The ant worked all the time storing food for winter and while the grasshopper sang and danced.

Sometimes the ant would pause in his work at listen to the grasshopper sing. It was a lovely song, and made him think about when he was younger, and his wife was still alive.

The days were long and warm, and the grasshopper’s song made everyone who heard it happy, as if winter would never arrive. Even the birds became quiet in the long, hot afternoons, in order to listen to the grasshopper singing about who knows what.

However, winter was not to be put off forever. The ant kept working, knowing what was coming. His wife had not survived last winter. They’d worked together all summer long, but in the end, one morning he was unable to rouse her out of bed. She was too tired from working all summer long in the heat, and the ant had spent the rest of the winter underground and alone in his den.

One day, suddenly, winter arrived. It was as if someone had flipped a switch, and the ground was covered in a thick frost. The ant thought it would warm up again before winter really took hold, but he went into his den anyway and put his feet up. He was ready. He had more than enough to hold him through until the warm days returned for good. However, his den was lonely. He picked through the books he planned to finally read, and the tools he planned to repair, but it was not appealing. When his wife was alive, this had been the best part of the year, when they could finally be alone together just to sit together and talk about their lives, and drink endless cups of tea, and share lovely meals.

He heard a tapping at his door, a tik-tik-tik. It was the grasshopper. Until then the two of them had never spoken.

“Hello, er, Mr. Ant. It’s nice to meet you,” said the grasshopper.

“Hello, Mr. Grasshopper. It’s nice to meet you, too,” replied the ant. “Can I offer you some tea?”

“That would be lovely,” said the grasshopper, and they sat down an had a cup of tea, but the grasshopper looked nervous.

“You cannot seem to relax, Mr. Grasshopper,” said the ant. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes, well. It’s just that I’ve been singing and dancing all summer long, and I have nothing prepared for winter,” said the grasshopper.

The ant thought for a long minute, “Could you sing for me now, do you think?”

And the grasshopper did, a long melody that brought warmth to the ant’s exoskeleten. When he had finished, the ant said, “Would you mind, or I mean, would you like to spend winter here with me? I have more than enough food for myself. We’d have to make this place a bit bigger. You’re much larger than I am. Do you need very much to eat?”

The grasshopper assured him that he did not eat so very much (and this was true).

And so they spent the winter together, the ant cooking and making tea and the grasshopper singing through the long nights of winter, and both were happy.