Does it occur to anyone else that the fable is not a warning against doing favors in general but of siding with “outsiders” against “insiders”? When the farmer protects the venomous snake from the people trying to kill it, from a human perspective he’s doing a bad thing. When the heron recommends white fowl as a medicine, even he were not to himself become a meal, he’s not doing the bird community any favors. And the farmer’s wife, in letting the heron go, is depriving her husband of vital medicine.
Does it occur to anyone else that the fable is not a warning against doing favors in general but of siding with “outsiders” against “insiders”? When the farmer protects the venomous snake from the people trying to kill it, from a human perspective he’s doing a bad thing. When the heron recommends white fowl as a medicine, even he were not to himself become a meal, he’s not doing the bird community any favors. And the farmer’s wife, in letting the heron go, is depriving her husband of vital medicine.
That seems a coherent interpretation.