Toucan Parable

So, this is the story of a little random subset in a dream I had recently. The main part of the dream involved 1920's geisha, awesome pyrotechnics, and God impersonation. But never mind that.

So I find myself narrating a sort of... child's book, or maybe a child's PBS morning cartoon or something, because it was also like a nature video of a toucan Family. With my voice-overs. 

This is how it went.

"Once upon a time, amid the wet, green jungle bordering the Amazon River in South America, there lived a toucan Mother, and a toucan Father, and a toucan Son. They were very happy in the jungle eating nuts, showing off their colorful bills, and chatting with their neighbor toucans.

But one day, Toucan Father decided that his family did not get enough respect from the other toucan families. So he decided to tell a little fib.

'Did you hear that my son just got back from university?' He asked his toucan neighbors as they all sat on a branch cracking nuts together.

'Toucans don't go to universities,' they replied. 'We crack nuts for food and fly around the Amazon jungle, looking for adventure.'

Toucan Father went slightly berserk at this. He had expected his gullible neighbors to believe anything he said, no matter how preposterous. 

'He has been to university, I tell you! And graduated with honors! He is now a certified *hedonitrician! A hedonitrician, I say! My son is a hedonitrician!" Toucan Father flapped his wings as he shouted, and Toucan Son hid his beak in his feathers in shame.

No one ever really believed Toucan Father, but he continued to repeat this lie over and over throughout the years. Eventually Toucan Son, desperate to give credence to his father's dishonesty, became a Toucan Thief and stole jewelry and other valuable objects in order to prove that he was indeed as successful and rich as a certified hedonitrician would be. But everybody knew of his misdeeds, and the Toucan family soon became a despised and shunned presence in the Amazon Jungle community.

The moral of the story is, don't let your pride goad you into telling lies, because you will end up hurting those you love most. And nobody will believe you, anyway. The end."

*My brain made this word up