Once upon a time, in the middle of a sunlit kitchen, a great glass jar of wild clover honey stood on the edge of a wooden table. The honey inside was thick and golden and sweeter than sugar, and it caught the light in a way that made the whole jar glow.
Then a playful gust of wind came through the open window and caught the curtains.
WHOOSH!
The curtain swung forward, bumped the jar — and TILT… CRASH!
Over it went. The golden honey came flowing out of the mouth of the jar and spread slowly across the table, stretching further and further, like a slow, sticky river.
It did not take long for the warm kitchen air to fill with the most delicious sugary smell you could ever imagine. It drifted out of the window and down over the herb beds and along the garden wall.
And down in the garden, a great swarm of flies smelled it.
Bzzzzzz… Bzzzzzz…
The Feast Without an Invitation
They came zooming in through the window in a dark rushing crowd, their wings vibrating with excitement. They did not care whose kitchen it was. They certainly did not wait to be invited.
“Look at that golden mountain!” buzzed a big green fly named Barnaby. “It’s all for us!”
They swarmed down onto the table like a cloud. And they were so impatient, and so excited, that they did not settle politely at the edge and dip their mouths in for a sip. Not a bit of it. They landed right in the middle of the sticky river. They went in feet first, rolling about in it, desperate to gorge themselves on as much sweetness as their tiny stomachs could possibly hold.
For a few glorious minutes it was a fly paradise. They ate and ate and ate, buzzing and laughing to one another.
“More! More! MORE!” they cried, and not a single one of them stopped to look at how deep they had waded.
The Sticky Situation
But very quickly indeed, the fun stopped.
Barnaby decided he had eaten enough, and went to lift his front legs to wipe his face.
His feet would not move.
He tried again, harder. The honey held him fast — thick and heavy, like quicksand.
“Uh oh,” Barnaby buzzed nervously. “I say. I’m stuck.”
The other flies turned to look at him, and found that they could not turn very far, because every one of them had exactly the same problem. They had been so greedy, rolling about in the middle of the treat, that they were now coated from head to foot in gluey gold.
Wiggle, wiggle, pull! They struggled with all their might.
But the more they thrashed about, the worse it became. Their delicate see-through wings grew heavy with syrup and stuck flat against their backs. They could not fly. They could not walk. They could not so much as lift one small foot out of the heavy, sticky mess.
The Cost of Greed
The happy buzzing died away into small, sad whimpers.
The flies looked at the beautiful sweet honey lying all around them — more of it than they could ever have dreamed of — and could not enjoy a single drop. Their own greed had trapped them, as surely as any cage.
One by one their strength faded, and one by one they grew still. And so the poor foolish flies were lost, having given up everything they had for the sake of a little taste of sweetness.
When the kitchen maid came in later with her cloth to clean up the spill, she looked at the table and sighed, and wished the flies had been just a little bit wiser.
The Moral of the Story: Do not be greedy for a small passing pleasure. Treats and fun are wonderful things — but if we let greed take over, and never learn when to stop, our choices can land us in very big and very sticky trouble.