Aesop: The Dog & His Shadow

One of my favorite fables by the famed story teller Aesop is one called the Dog and His Shadow. As written by Joseph Jacobs it goes like this:

 It happened that a Dog had got a piece of meat and was carrying it home in his mouth to eat it in peace. Now on his way home he had to cross a plank lying across a running brook. As he crossed, he looked down and saw his own shadow reflected in the water beneath. Thinking it was another dog with another piece of meat, he made up his mind to have that also. So he made a snap at the shadow in the water, but as he opened his mouth the piece of meat fell out, dropped into the water and was never seen more.

The moral of the story

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow