On the African savanna, lion served as doctor. Lion was a great doctor who would visit any sick animal and bring it back to health. When it came time for payment, lion asked only for food. Doctor lion had a brilliant mind, but a greedy heart. He always brought another animal along as nurse, to carry his wares and run his errands. While lion merely diagnosed the problem, the nurse did all the real work. Many animals in the kingdom had tried their hand at serving as nurse—zebra, elephant, even meerkat—and each of them worked for just one day!
Lion was clever, you see, and always played a trick on whoever was working as his nurse. As lion’s patient was healing, he would send nurse off to find ingredients for potions or to gather leaves for bandages. While nurse was out, lion would immediately demand his payment of dinner and gobble it all up! Nurse would return to find nothing left—just their own hungry, empty belly! The tricked animals would be angry, but none would dare say a thing to lion for fear of being banished…or eaten! When lion would ask them to serve as nurse again, they would pretend to be too busy. Lion could always find another animal to fool, and the cycle went unbroken for a very long time.
Rabbit, however, was just as clever as lion. He heard zebra complaining one day about what had happened to her, and decided to volunteer. Rabbit went with lion as his nurse, and everything went as it always had—with one exception; unlike the others, rabbit went back to work the next day. Rabbit told lion that he loved his new job, and that he was never hungry because he slept on tree fibers each night.
Lion was intrigued, and asked rabbit to make him a bed of tree fibers. That night, lion lay down with his full belly on the tree fiber bed. While he slept, rabbit tied lion up with the ends of the fibers, and when lion awoke, he realized he could not move. Rabbit gathered all the animals of the savanna around and made lion promise to share his food, or else they would leave him to starve. Lion felt shamed, and promised to share his bounty with all the animals. Lion was set free and honored his word. Nurse rabbit had outsmarted lion and brought understanding (and food!) to the animals of the savanna.
