Tale of Blacky and Whitey

One upon a time there lived two snake brothers in a jungle. One of them was white in colour and other was black. Their parents named them Blacky and Whitey. One day they were playing who will pick the apple from a tree. The apple was a little high and they were finding it hard to reach. In a fit to win, both of them took a big run-up for jumping and struck the apple at the same time. The apple fell, but both of them started fighting over who win. Blacky said he won and Whitey said he won. The fight over apple made them bitter enemies. 

One day a white snake was quarrelling with a black snake. Whitey gave the black snake a good thrashing and told the white snake to stay away from black snakes as they are really evil. When Blacky came to know about this, he thrashed a white snake as well and repeated the same message of evil about the white snakes. That day the jungle got divided between black and white snakes. It was impossible for snakes to move about freely in the jungle. Whenever some group of black snakes saw some alone white snake, they would immediately surround and beat him. White snakes did the same to black snakes. 

Once a snake catcher came to the jungle. He observed how the black and white snakes behaved. He immediately came up with a strategy to catch snakes. First he used his tricks to catch a white snake. Then he took a big cage and put the white snake in it. He kept this cage in the area that belonged to black snakes. When the black snakes saw a white snake, they all flocked into the cage to attack the white snake. While they were busy beating the white snake, the snake catcher closed the cage and took home a big bundle of black snakes. He sold the snakes in the market to people who liked to eat snakes. He sold all the snakes except one black snake. Next time he put the black snake in the cage and took it to white snakes area. As expected, the white snakes came to attack the black snakes and ended up getting caught in the cage. 

The snakes didn’t knew what was happening. Whenever the snakes disappeared, the snakes thought it was the other side who was killing them. One day Whitey was roaming around in the jungle and he saw lots of white snakes beating a black snake. He was very tired and thinking about missing snakes. Instead of joining them, he just stood where he was and started resting, waiting for other white snakes to come back. He was startled when he saw the snake catcher closing the cage and catching all the snakes. He was devastated. It was clear to him why the snakes are disappearing. He called all the white snakes and told them about cage and how the snake catcher is using black snakes to catch them. The white snakes were furious. They decided to kill Whitey because he was the one who told them to beat the black snakes whenever they see one. 

The next time snake catcher came with a cage with a black snake, no white snake went near the cage. Snake catcher was surprised. He knew that they knew how he was catching them. Even when any black snake came into white area, they would not bother and let him be. The two areas of the jungle started to change colours. The black area became smaller and the white area started to grow and become grey in colour.  Few white snakes were still getting caught in the grey area, but the black snakes continue to disappear. After some time very few black snakes were left in the black area. The snake catcher stopped coming to the jungle because most of the snakes had learned how to avoid the cage. The jungle was grey again with black and white snakes everywhere.