In dark wood there once lay a man’s shoe. No one knew where it had come from. No man had ever than near the wood. The wild animals that lived nearby had never seen a man. But there in the wood was the shoe.

The first one to see it was the bear. He poked it with his nose. He rolled it over and over with his great paws. But he could not think what it was.

Then he called all the other wild animals to look it. Not one of them had ever seen a shoe before.

First the lion spoke and said, `it is plain that it is the bark of a tree.’

`Oh1 no,’ said the leopard, ‘it must be the skin of some fruit.’

Then the monkey said, `I think it is the shell of a nut’.

Bit the wolf growled, `It is not that at all. Of course it is a bird’s nest. Look, here is the hole for the bird to go in. here is the deep part for the eggs. It must be a bird’s nest, of course.’

The got said, `you are all wrong.’ Then he pointed to the log shoestring and said, `Look at this long root. It is some kind of plant, of course’.

And so the animals went on talking. Each thought that he was right. They even began to get a little angry.

While this was going on, an old owl sat in tree near by. He said, `if you will all keep quiet, I will tell you what it is. I have seen more of these things than you can count. It is a man’s shoe.’

`A what?’ cried all the animals? `What is a man, and what is a shoe?’

`A man,’ said, the owl’, is a thing with two legs. He is like a bird, but has no feathers. He can walk like us. He can talk like us. But he can do much more than we can’.

`That can not be true,’ growled the bear.

`How can a thing with only two legs do more things than we can with four legs? It is not true, of course’.

`Of course it is not true,’ screamed he birds. `How can there be a thing with legs, without feathers?’

`Well,’ cried the owl. `What I say is true. A man makes a thing like this. He calls them shoes, and outs them on his feet.’

`Not true, not true!’ shouted all the animals.

`We know that such things are not worm on the feet.’

`What you say is not so’.

`You are not fit o live with us’.

`You must leave the wood.’ So they all chased the poor old owl out of the wood.

`It is true, for all that,’ said the owl.

And of course it was.