The Cotton-Eyed Doe

A doe, having the sharp vision of an eagle in one eye and yet being blind as a bat in the other, grazed near the edge of a cliff—as near as she could while still maintaining the barest of safety. With her good eye, she cautiously observed the surrounding land. Her poor eye, which appeared to be covered with a skein of cotton, she assigned to face the sea; for what creatures could harm her from there? From land, you see, she faced all sorts of predators, such as hunters and dogs. These could race across the ground to reach her. The sea, however, could only grasp as far as the tide reached, and here she was safe--too high on the cliff for the greedy ocean to reach her.

Yet one day, as the doe grazed and pondered the intricacies of life, some sailors out at sea saw her silhouette. Taking careful aim, one of them fired and fatally wounded her.  Sharp pain spiraled through her body, pain as relentless as the pull of a riptide. The doe cried out in horror, “How blind I’ve been! I took such precaution against the land, believing it to be perilous—and yet it's the seashore that was”.