The Blind Prophet and Hee Haw
It is not surprising that during my watery exile and long with my dolphin companions that they should come to view me as nothing less than a god. My wisdom was ever on display and their admiration of my bipedalism and mastery of Solubility never ceased to both abash and delight them. Yet even the most sagacious of mankind are apt to err.
   One cloudless dawn I was wending my way, as I had now done for over nine interminable years, to the irenic lagoon for my early morning ablutions. As I trod the path I had followed daily, I was distracted by a large and obtuse bird in flight. No longer heeding my ambulation, my left foot caught on an insolent and ill-placed stone, causing me to fall face-first to earth. As I rose, spitting sand and cursing from my very spleen the errant stone for its effrontery, I was startled by a chorus of high-pitched dolphin laughter. Yet, noting my grim face, sand-filled mouth and grotesquely swollen toe, their impertinent cachinnations abated as I limped to where they floated cloistered in the shallow water.
   "My friends," I cautioned sternly, "you may laugh at my digital misfortune and grit-filled beard, but it is well to remember that that even the wisest cannot see all ends and from time to time err, as all humans are wont to do. As I soak my foot in this cool water I shall tell you a tale to illustrate this so you shall nevermore chortle at the missteps of the wise."
  
   "Once in the ancient city of Ur there lived a great prophet, blind from birth, and filled with such wisdom and discernment as had never before been visited on mortal man. Though aged beyond the normal life span of his day, this sightless seer undertook a yearly pilgrimage to Sumer for the celebration of the goddess Ningal. Though not a religious man, he always attended the festivities as he relished the honor the citizens accorded him, as well as the choicest cuts of the lamb, the finest ale and the kind attentions of the young maidens and dancing girls.
   "Now one might suppose that for an unsighted and hoary old prophet to make this journey from Ur to Sumer unaccompanied would be a dangerous adventure, but the elderly haruspex had made the trek for years and years. He feared nothing, not even the bandits and highwaymen who infested the lonely road, for even these brigands held the old man in great awe, such was his power. Moreover, he could rely on his gray-haired donkey, affectionately named Hee Haw, who had made the trip years uncounted. Sure-footed Hee Haw knew the road like his own pungent and ever-present scent, and even in the worst of sand storms never lost his way.
   "Halfway to Sumer, near the town of Uruk, the old soothsayer stopped for the night. It was many days now he had been traveling and he fell into a sound and untroubled sleep. When morning broke, he stretched and lighting a small fire, broke his fast and made ready to continue his journey. Calling to his ass, Hee Haw, who never wandered far, he was dismayed not to hear the familiar response that gave the donkey its name. Grabbing his stick, he rose and called again and again. There was no answer.
   "For nearly an hour the groping oracle called the old donkey, feeling his way about the desert with his stick. At last he stopped, exhausted and called out one more time, 'Hee Haw!' There was an answer! He shouted again and loudly, right in front of him, he heard the ass braying, over and over. Rushing forward in joy he took two steps and plummeted headfirst down the well of Anni-Padda never to be seen again. Unfortunately, it was not the timely braying of his donkey he had heard, but only the echoes of his own desperate voice, reverberating up from the ancient well, the old prophet not realizing that his faithful ass had recently gone deaf and had been following him devotedly for over two hours.
   "Several days later the old donkey arrived riderless in Sumer, where he was welcomed and honored, though he could give no news of his master. But it only goes to show that sometimes even the wisest of men cannot tell their ass from a hole in the ground."

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