The Grasshopper and the Ants is an ancient fable about a grasshopper who spent the whole summer playing music and laughing at the ants who were working hard to lay up winter stores. When winter came, he begged their help, but they turned him away and he perished (in real life, they would have added him to the food storage). A more compassionate version is presented in the Disney cartoon version. The Ant Queen grants the improvident insect permission to stay in the colony if he plays music in return for his room and board. He lives, performs his art, and the ants have a ball. Winter boredom is prevented, and the tunnels become a grand ballroom.
a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content.
An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.
The ant is well fed and warm in his house, but the grasshopper has not prepared for the winter, so he dies, leaving a whole hoard of little grasshoppers without food or shelter.
The ant is fined for failing to employ a proportionate number of green insects and having nothing left to pay his back-taxes, his home is confiscated by the government for redistribution.
Showing on the TV (which he and a couple of his friends stole from another ant) the president is standing before a group of wildly singing and dancing grasshoppers announcing that a new era of Equality has dawned on the field.
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