A Modern Fable

What is the moral or morals of my story?

There once was a grumpy bear named Dexter and a friendly squirrel named Caleb.  The two were talking one day when both took notice of a large blackberry bush, teeming with succulent blackberries, across the river. The river between them and the bush was not wide but it was deep and raging, though only about half as deep as usual, since it had been a dry winter.  Dexter piped up first. “I’m going to get me some of those berries!”

“That would be wonderful,” replied Caleb.  “I would love to gather some to share with all our forest friends.”

“Oh, no,” grumbled Dexter, “If I work that hard to get over there, I’m not sharing.”

With that, Dexter got up and jumped dramatically off the bank into the river’s edge and began to tenaciously walk against the current. Suddenly, he was caught up in it and swept down river.  He almost drowned, but finally grabbed onto the side of a boulder sticking out of the low river, some sixty feet downstream. He heaved himself onto the bank again with a belly flop and a gasp.

At first, Caleb was shocked by what he saw. He squinted at Dexter and then looked back at the half empty river and contemplated it awhile. With a plan in mind, Caleb then got up, went and rounded up as many of his forest friends as he could and told them what he’d witnessed and what he wanted to do for all of them. By that time, Dexter had crawled back to the place he started, but a little more humble and embarrassed.  He asked Caleb if he had gathered all his friends to jeer at him.

“Oh no,” Caleb replied. “I’ve brought them all here to work together to get those blackberries…but I do need your help.”

“Okay, but I’m not stepping into that engorged river again!”

“No need,” Caleb replied, “we will bridge that gap over the river together.”  With that, he guided Dexter back to the river bank and to the narrowest point possible where a flexible young tree grew.  At his guidance, Dexter laid his big body across a large young branch and leaned out over the water with its support until he formed a bridge.  The other animals happily jumped up and stationed themselves across Dexter’s back all the way to the berries. Like a fire brigade, they worked to take handfuls and pass them to each other across Dexter’s bridge to those stationed on the other side.  When there was plenty for all, the group walked back across Dexter. Then together they pulled on the back of the tree limb to leverage Dexter back off the river banks and catapulted him softly back to the ground, where he too got to share the fruit of everyone’s labor.