The Animal School

Once upon a time, all the animals got together and decided that they must do something to prepare their young to face the challenges of the world, and so they organized a school. They adopted a curriculum of running, climbing, swimming and flying. And to make sure all animals were competent in all of the important skills, all the animal children had to take all of the subjects.

Duck was an excellent swimmer, better in fact than his instructor, and made passing grades in flying, but he was very poor in running. Because he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also spend less time swimming, in order to spend more time practicing his running. This was continued until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But, average was acceptable in the new animal school, so nobody worried about that except the Duck.

Rabbit started at the top of her class in running, but later she had a nervous breakdown because of so much make-up work in swimming.

Squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in flying class, where his teacher made him start from down on the ground instead of from up in the treetops. His feelings of frustration spilled over into all his other classes and he ended up with a C in climbing and a D in running.

The newest student in the school was a strange animal called the Snakehead fish. He was very different from the other animals and often felt out of place.

At first he struggled and was behind in almost every subject. But by the end of the year the Snakehead fish, which could swim well and climb trees and also walk on land, was the number one student in the entire school and was voted valedictorian of his class.