Haileybury Gazette | Hope | Issue 9

At the beginning of time, all the birds in the world lived in a big forest. The more of them
there were, the happier they were and the more fun they had. They took what they wanted
from the forest, and they never worried about anything.
All except for the owl.
None of the other birds liked the owl, because she was always telling them what to do. It
seemed as if every time the owl saw them having fun, she would say ‘Don’t do that!’ ‘Don’t
sing so loudly!’ ‘Don’t drop your feathers on the ground,’ ‘Don’t make a mess.’
Most of all, she didn’t like the way they ate. Every day, the birds flew off looking for hemp
seed, their favourite food. They’d bring back the seed heads and sit in the branches, pecking
at the seeds and letting half of them fall to the ground, where it sprouted into tall hemp
plants.
‘Don’t do that!’ said the owl. ‘Don’t let the hemp plants grow! If you do, there will be
trouble.’
And when the seeds began to sprout, she said: ‘Pull up the seedlings! Don’t let anything
grow! Or there will be trouble!’
But the birds took no notice. They began to make fun of the owl. ‘Don’t do that! Don’t do
that,’ they would chant when they saw her coming.
The owl got so angry that she flew away. ‘I give up!’ she said. ‘If they won’t listen to my
advice, I won’t have anything more to do with them. She went to live in a hole in a tree, and
only ever came out at night.
Meanwhile, the birds carried on living happily without anybody telling them what to do. The
longer they lived there, the more their numbers increased: the more mess they made and the
taller the hemp plants grew.
But one day, the hunters came. They found the hemp plants and cut them down. They
stripped them and plaited them together to make ropes. They wove the ropes into nets, which
they spread on the ground, and soon many birds were trapped and caught in the nets.
The birds rushed off to look for the owl. ‘You are so clever, owl! You knew exactly what the
hunters would do! Help us now!’
But the owl hid her head under her wing and said nothing at all. And ever since, the hemp
plants have flourished, and little birds still get caught in nets.
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