The Story Of The Man, The Tiger, And The Crocodiles

I Think I First Heard This From Joseph Campbell During A Lecture On The Hero With A Thousand Faces

A tiger chases a man through the woods. The man is running out of breath. His situation seems hopeless, especially because he is running toward a cliff.

At the edge of the cliff, he glances back at the tiger and then down at the brackish water where he counts three, maybe four large crocodiles. The tiger is getting close.

The man sees a small tree jutting out halfway down the cliff face, and as the tiger lunges, the man launches himself, managing to grasp a limb on the small tree.

As he hangs there suspended between two certain deaths, he is startled when a woodchuck emerges from a hole in the cliff and begins gnawing at the base of the small tree.

“Well, this is a fine mess,” the man thinks. “Scat!” he says, but the woodchuck ignores him. The tiger snarls. The crocodiles float like toothsome turds.

But then the man notices a small outcropping on which grows a clump of bright red, juicy strawberries.

He stretches as far as he can, but he can not reach the berries, until he shimmies out further along slender branch and bends way over, pinching the largest berry between his outstretched fingers, and plopping it into his mouth.

“Ah,” he says, “That’s delicious.”