A boy who found an eagle’s egg put it into the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life, the changeling eagle, thinking he was a prairie chicken, did what the prairie chickens did.
He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled. And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, that’s how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.
Years passed and the changeling eagle grew old. One day, he saw a magnificent bird soaring in the cloudless sky, high above the mountains. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
...
“Oh, I wish I could fly like that!” said the eagle to his neighbor.
“That’s the mighty eagle—the king of all birds,” the neighbor clucked back. “But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.”
So the eagle never gave it another thought and it died thinking it was a prairie chicken.
He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. He clucked and cackled. And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, that’s how prairie chickens were supposed to fly.
Years passed and the changeling eagle grew old. One day, he saw a magnificent bird soaring in the cloudless sky, high above the mountains. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
...
“Oh, I wish I could fly like that!” said the eagle to his neighbor.
“That’s the mighty eagle—the king of all birds,” the neighbor clucked back. “But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.”
So the eagle never gave it another thought and it died thinking it was a prairie chicken.
know your own worth and act accordingly
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